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What the hell am I doing to him? Last I checked, I’m the one who got carved up at the rave, stalked throughout my entire teenage years and ravaged in my sleep.

I give him an icy stare and the smaller guy finally takes his hands off me.

I jerk away and scramble up, glaring at him. “I don’t respond to idle threats.”

He rises and peers down at me, pure steel raging from his eyes just as a shadow looms behind him, and I make eye contact with Lincoln in the doorway.

Xander shakes his head, his jaw flexing. “You really have no idea what you’re a part of, do you?”

I attempt to keep my breathing steady. “I’m here to see Lincoln. I’m here to talk to him, that’s it.” My eyes are steady on Lincoln, but Xander still doesn’t notice him.

Xander scoffs, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “You’re destroying him by being here. If you don’t leave, Lincoln Kennedy won’t exist anymore. And he doesn’t care about you because he doesn’t care about anybody. He’s a robot. He’s incapable of feeling anything.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

SUMMER

“That was unnecessarily theatrical,” Lincoln says as he stands at the shadowed doorway with his arms crossed, glasses on. He’s holding his mask, his hair messy, like he just woke up from a nap or has been running his hands through it.

With his dark eyes peering through the glasses, his gaze travels down to my dress, still hitched above my legs. As our eyes meet, his pupils flare and flicker, and he effortlessly glides into the room.

The way my heart stops from that flicker and my body instantly relaxes. I want to be the one running my hands through his hair. I want to be the only one he ever looks at like that.

I smirk at Xander, who moves away from me, his arms crossed defensively, and his eyebrows rise as he observes our interaction. His body is rigid, every muscle taut, as if his insides are wound up like a tight, compressed coil.

Lincoln ignores Xander, and watches the other masked man, who now stands coolly to the side, as the two brothers face off. All of them have now removed their burlap sack masks.

Lincoln glares at the one who restrained me. “If you put your hands on Summer again, I will cut off every one of your fingers and choke you with them. And if you think I’m joking, ask Xander what I’m capable of. Summer is off limits.”

A lump forms in his throat as the guy struggles to swallow. “Look, man, I was just doing what Xander told me to do. I was just holding her down; we weren’t hurting her.”

Lincoln’s stillness is absolute, and an aura overcomes him. A subtle tilt of his head, a shift in his demeanor. Unimpeded rage oozes out of him.

He tilts his head, speaking to the ground. His eyes falter just as he raises his head and removes his glasses.

“Listen very carefully, you little fucking twat. I will end your miserable life if you ever touch her again.” My heart lurches.

Mikael.

I recognize the voice that comes out of him—so intimately. That was not Lincoln speaking. The clear transition, the clear flip, and I’m not sure anyone else noticed. But Xander flinches, and for a fleeting moment, even with the rippling tattoos on his arms, he looks petrified.

He quickly regains his composure and faces Mikael while his friend flees from the room.

I’m transfixed by Mikael, watching him smile at Xander, a slow knowing grin that makes my pulse quicken. I focus on his eyes, which aren’t translucent like they were a moment ago, or at the rave; they are now a solid brick-like color as they were when he was fucking me. When his hungry eyes find mine again, they flash.

Then, as if a switch has been flipped, he becomes still, and that same flicker appears before his eyes return to their usual hue. I’m not sure what I just witnessed, but it was the way he was acting in his office, and it makes me wonder if there are perhaps three of them inside his head.

Xander casts a glance at me as I sit up on the bed cross-legged, and I give my cockiest smirk. As if to say, See, asshole, he likes me. They all do…

Xander shakes his head and curls his lip before he takes a step toward Lincoln and slaps him on the back as he walks out the door. “I hope you enjoy your funeral, sweetheart,” he says to me as he slams the door behind him.

Lincoln turns to face me, his glasses square on his face again.

My little heart is racing—the rapid beating might kill me before he does, especially with how he’s looking at me right now. His face is so soft, and his eyebrows arch like he’s worried. Very much the way Lincoln watches me.

He hesitates for only a moment before crawling in behind me and positioning me so I’m between his legs, then lays us both back on the soft fabric of the headboard and silk pillows.