Slide.
Thud.
The sound of the heavy deadbolt sliding home was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
I leaned my back against the wall next to the closed door, sliding down until my ass hit the hallway floor. I put my head in my hands, exhaling a breath that shook my entire frame.
"Jesus," Simon whispered from further down the hall. He was sitting on the floor, his back against the opposite wall, clutching his knees. He looked like he was vibrating apart. "Are we dead? Did we just kill our careers?"
"Our careers are fine," Anders said. He was pacing in the living room, the frantic energy of a caged tiger. "Theauthoris… communicative. Hostile, but communicative."
"Communicative?" Simon let out a hysterical, jagged laugh. "She tried to kill us with a piece of mid-century modern decor, Anders. She hates us. She remembers everything."
"She remembers us stopping her heart from exploding," Anders argued, though his voice lacked its usual conviction. He ran a hand through his messy blond hair, destroying what was left of his composure. "Matherson, that was… risky. 'Unless you beg'? What the hell was that?"
I lifted my head from my hands. My blood was still humming, the scent of her fear and her underlying, spicy arousal stuck in my nose.
"It was the truth," I rumbled.
"It was a provocation," Anders corrected, stopping his pacing to glare at me. "You basically told the client that we're open for business if she decides to have another episode."
"No," I said, staring at the grain of the wood on the floor. "I told the woman that she has the power. If we touch her, it’s because she wants it. Not because she’s sick. Not because she’s weak. Because she chooses it."
"She hates us," Simon repeated, his voice sounding wet. He looked at his hands, the ink-stained fingers that had been inside her hours ago. He rubbed them against his jeans, a furious, scrubbing motion. "I used to draw her, Daniel. For years. I have sketchbooks full of her face. And now she looks at me like I’m a monster."
"Wearemonsters to her, Si," I said gently. "We’re the ghosts of the worst day of her life."
"So how do we fix it?" Anders asked. He pulled his phone out, habitually checking for a signal that wasn't there. He cursed and shoved it back into his pocket. "We’re trapped here for forty-eight hours minimum. With an unstable asset who has locked herself in the master suite."
"We wait," I said. "We feed her. We keep the world out."
I tilted my head to the side so my ear was almost against the wood of the door. I could hear movement on the other side. Soft footsteps. A pause. Then more footsteps.
She was pacing.
"And," I added, closing my eyes, "we let her realize that the monsters aren't here to hurt her this time."
ELEVEN
Tessa
I waited until I heard the heavy thud of Daniel sitting down against the other side of the door.
He was guarding it. Not to keep me in, but to keep the others, and maybe even himself, out.
Unless you beg.
The words echoed in the empty room, bouncing off the glass walls, mocking me. The audacity of it. The sheer, arrogant Alpha presumption.
I paced the length of the rug, my bare feet sinking into the wool. My skin felt too tight. The aftershocks of the heat, chemically induced and brutally interrupted, were still fizzing in my blood like cheap champagne. My hands were shaking, but not from fear anymore.
It was rage, and beneath the rage, something hotter. Something darker.
I looked at the mess of the room. The shattered water carafe. The tangled sheets. The impression of three bodies on my rug and chair.
They had invaded everything. They had seen everything. Seenme.
I kicked at the pile of debris near the window where Simon had been sleeping. My toe hit something solid. A leather strap caught on my foot and I looked down.
