Page 83 of Heat Lightning

The bright glow of his phone answered my question. “Seriously?” I asked. “Being on your phone before bed is bad for you, you know.”

He carded his fingers through my hair. “I have to check on my quetzal.”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“My quetzal. I started it this morning and totally forgot. I need to swap it for my anteater before bed.”

Alarmed, I sat up. “Are you having a stroke? Lift both arms, please.”

He chuckled. “I am not having a stroke. It’s Wordscapes. My team is in a tournament.”

I sighed. “Thank God. Mr. Marino already thinks I lock men in here. When he gets back, I’m not explaining an ambulance hauling out a giant masked man.” Then I registered the rest of his sentence. “Wait, you play a word game?”

Looking up from his phone, he narrowed his eyes. “You lock men in here? Who? When?”

I laughed, a high-pitched wheeze that was light years away from cute, and reached for his phone. “You cannot seriously be jealous that I locked someone in my bedroom. Show me this game.”

He held the phone out of my reach. “When did you lock someone in here? And why does he know that? I thought you said he doesn’t visit you.”

Exasperated, I threw myself down onto the pillows. “You, you thick-headed alpha. I locked you in here, remember? When you had to crawl out the window because he was at the door?”

“Oh.” He had the decency to look chastened.

“Yeah, oh. Now, what in the world is a quetzal?”

He shimmied over so his head rested on my stomach and let me peer over his shoulder while he very proudly showed off his massive collection of—thankfully digital—animals, giving lots of detail about the benefits of each one in the game.

I wouldn’t remember any of it ten minutes from now. I would, however, never forget how adorable he was when he really got going on something.

“Such a nerd,” I said when he finished. But I rested my hand on his chest, sliding it back and forth across his dolphin T-shirt, and gave him a comforting pat. “Who knew you were all muscle and brains?”

I swore the bridge of his nose turned pink. “It’s just guessing words.”

I chuckled again and left him to it, reaching for my own phone so I could do some scrolling myself.

Except I forgot one very important thing.

Critical, I’d say.

Gwen’s comments about MaskTok made me curious, and I may have done some research of my own.

Thorough research. With notes. I could make a PowerPoint.

Which meant the first video that popped up when I opened TikTok was of a man dressed in full cosplay gear, wearing a military-style helmet and vest with black eye makeup smudged beneath a skull mask, stalking toward the camera.

And blaring at full fucking volume was an audio of a man very obviously jerking off, moaning and sighing and begging to finally be allowed to come.

I scrambled to shut the app, mute the volume, or chuck the whole thing out the window—any of which were preferable to my current circumstances—but in my haste I fumbled the phone and dropped it.

Right onto my nose.

The immediate tang of blood filled my nostrils and dripped onto my mouth.

“Ow!” I said, more in surprise than anything else. I tried to stem the flow with my hand, but upon seeing a good amount of blood on my fingers, I cursed and tipped my head back.

Atlas reacted quickly, his eyes going comically wide, and sat up onto his knees, batting my hand away to hold my nose himself. “What the—what happened? Why are you bleeding?”

“Give me my phone,” I said, patting around on the bed to find it before it auto-looped.