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“Go home with us, Tally,” Lucian whispered, his fingers straightening her dress as she fought for her sanity. “I promise, you won’t regret it. ”
“Tally,” Terrie called again, closer now.
“Tally?” Lucian’s voice was soft yet filled with demand. A demand that shook her to her core.
As much as she needed, as much as she knew she would regret it a second later, she also knew the price would be much too high.
“I can’t. ” She stepped back from him quickly, watching his eyes narrow as determination stamped his features.
“Just a minute, Terrie. ” She knew her voice was husky, not quite even, but couldn’t help it. “I’ll be right there. ”
Silence filled the area for long seconds. “I’ll wait here,” Terrie called back, her voice determined now. Tally stared back at Lucian, furious with herself and with him.
“This can’t happen,” she told them both desperately, but knowing it was too late to ever go back. “It will not happen again. Fantasy time is over, boys. This has to stop. ”
“You know it will happen again,” he warned her, his voice pulsing with arousal as Dev cursed again, his voice irate, husky with his own lust. “The next time there won’t be any interruptions, though. Think about that one, Ms. Jaded Tally. ”
Her eyes widened as his words sank in, knowledge exploding through her head as she stared up at him. There were few people who knew her online persona as Jaded. So few that she could count them on one hand. Lucian should not have been one of them.
“Didn’t I tell you once that your little side life would rear up and bite you in the ass one day? Consider yourself bitten, baby. ”
Wicked. Fury rushed through her bloodstream, white-hot and intense. He was Wicked, the online womanizing bastard! The cyber man of her dreams with a fetish for every fantasy that had ever entered her depraved imagination.
“You bastard,” she hissed. “You lied to me. All that time. ”
“Like hell. ” He was in her face, nearly nose to nose as he snarled back at her. “You gave yourself away, darlin’, when you started talking about Lucifer and his microchip for a brain. You should keep your online and offline insults separate if you want to hide. ”
She was trembling from fury. She couldn’t remember ever being so angry. She had shared things with Wicked. He had been her comfort, someone to be at ease with, someone she had thought understood. Pain seared her chest even as she acknowledged the fact that she should have expected it. Had even once suspected it.
“I’ll resign,” she snapped. “I’ll be damned if I’ll continue to work for you any longer. ”
Lucian shrugged mockingly. “You’ll be too tired to work anyway, once we’re finished with you, so do what you please. ”
Her teeth snapped together as she fought to hold back her screams of outrage.
“I will not be your toy,” she informed him coldly. “Yours or Devril’s. ”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ll be much more that that, Tally,” he told her darkly. “Like it or not, the countdown starts now. Enjoy your freedom while you can. I told you, baby, you made a mistake in the office that last day. You gave no quarter, damn you, I better not hear you asking for it. ”
“That sounds like a threat. ” She fought for imperious calm but was afraid she came across as viperously snide.
“I prefer to see it as a promise,” he told her enigmatically. “But you can take it however you like. We will have you, Tally, eventually. ”
“In your dreams. ” She was shaking in fury now. Fury and lust. She didn’t know if she wanted to kill him or fuck him.
“Tally?” Terrie called out firmly. “Now. ”
Tally’s lip curled insultingly as she stared at Lucian a second longer before she turned and hurried toward Terrie’s voice. She was flushed, furious and just plain tired. Dealing with Terrie now wasn’t something she was looking forward to.
Chapter Seven
Terrie had no emergency. Tally was almost amused when she realized her friend had followed Lucian and Dev, determined to protect her from whatever plans they had. The emergency had been no more than a ruse to get her out of their arms and back into the house so Terrie could assure herself that Tally knew what she was getting into.
She was furious, but a tiny part of her was amazed and in awe that they had managed to fool her so effectively. It had never been done before. This was a first for her. It would be funny if she weren’t so damned mad.
“You can sleep here. ” Terrie led her into the guest bedroom nearly an hour later after a less than polite argument on the merits of Tally spending the night.
Tally would have preferred the drive home to staying in a strange bed, but when Terrie got that wounded, hurt look on her face, it was damned near impossible to say no. They had been friends for too long, had been through too much together to let a man destroy that friendship.
