Surrender 01 - Surrender

fighting to surface. The reality of the situation would most likely hit her soon, but for now it was much easier not to think about it.
    “Wow. I guess you don’t mince words.”
    “I don’t see any point in beating around the bush.”
    “Precisely how long have I been unconscious?”
    “It’s late Saturday night, so it’s been about twenty hours. You’re probably hungry.”
    “No. The thought of food is horrible. I’m fine now. I appreciate your looking out for me, but I can take care of myself.”
    “You’re far from fine, Ari. You were drugged and nearly raped. So I’m not going anywhere right now. I’ll have food brought over.”
    Before Ari could say anything else, he stood, drew out his phone and gracefully left the room as he punched in numbers. She was still struggling to deal with the pain invading her body, and she felt too weak to argue. It wasn’t as if he could cram the food down her throat. At least she didn’t think he’d take it that far.
    With a groan, she shifted her legs over the side of the bed until she felt her toes touch the floor. Slowly standing on wobbly legs, Ari held on to the side of the bed until she was sure she wasn’t going to fall flat on her face. When the dizziness passed, she took a deep breath and cautiously made her way to the bathroom, firmly shutting the door behind her.
    At Ari’s first look in the mirror — even in the crummy bathroom lighting — she nearly groaned again. Her hair looked as if rats had burrowed several nests inside, her face was ghostlike, and she had reddish-brown smudges beneath her eyes, accentuating her prominent cheekbones.
    If she’d happened to walk by someone who looked like that, she’d have assumed the person was dead or very nearly so. Hollywood couldn’t do a better makeup job. Using the last of her energy, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, rinsed her mouth out and ran a comb through her tangles. She wasn’t trying to impress Rafe; she just hoped that taking a bit of time with her appearance would make her feel a bit better.
    By the time she opened the door, she was drained of what little energy she’d awoken with, but she did feel slightly more human.
    Rafe had a low light burning in the corner, where he’d set up his laptop on a small desk that wasn’t hers. Then she noticed the new bedding covering her mattress. Come to think of it, her back wasn’t hurting the way it should have been after she’d been lying in bed for twenty hours.
    There’s no way she could have slept on the lumpy secondhand furniture for so long and not be feeling it in every vertebra of her back. She slowly returned to the bed and lifted the sheet, seeing a new mattress.
    She didn’t know whether to be grateful or feel invaded. Shopping for a bed was a little too intimate for a stranger to do. She really didn’t want to be any more in Rafe’s debt than his rescue had made her. She couldn’t afford to pay him back for whatever he’d spent, but she’d have to. She refused to have that hanging over her head.
    She’d hold off for now because it seemed petty of her to snap at the man for providing her with a comfortable bed when she was ill. Reimbursing him wouldn’t be easy — he’d take it as an assault on his pride. She’d have to slip an anonymous envelope beneath his door, or something like that. She didn’t need him to know she’d repaid him — she just needed to know, herself.
    As Ari climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up over her legs, there was a knock on the apartment door. The sound echoed inside her head, feeling like a set of bass drums playing a n upbeat tempo. So much for her headache easing.
    With extremely cautious movements, she lay back down and covered her head with one of the soft down pillows, hoping to block out the sound of the next attack on her thin wood door. Luckily, there was no more pounding. Soon, though, delicious aromas drifted beneath the pillow, filling her nostrils.
    After she heard muted sounds in her small kitchen, the smell of warm food became stronger, and Rafe sat down next to her bed.
    “Sit up for me, Ari — it’s time to eat something. I have soup and fresh bread.”
    “I’m not hungry,” she said, not wanting to accept anything else from him. It was starting to get a bit ridiculous. She needed him just to go home.
    Her stomach took that opportunity to growl loudly, as if to make sure Rafe knew she was a liar — that she most certainly was hungry. She hadn’t