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This is real. He wants me as badly as I want him.
Can I really go forward without knowing the full truth?
I need to ask him, get it out in the open, so he can chuckle and run his hands across my cheeks, calling me silly as he explains the completely innocent reason for the way he behaved earlier tonight.
My gut tightens as I open my mouth, chords of anxiety pulsing through me, telling me no, no, no – telling me to keep it buried deep and quiet, to not ruin what we have.
If it wasn’t for Conrad and his impossible enticing claim, Mom and I would be sleeping in a dingy apartment with no power, the lock broken because of Todd and his friends.
But I can’t allow myself to endure this silently. It will drive me insane.
“Conrad,” I whisper.
“Yes?” His voice rumbles through me as his fingers whisper through my hair.
“When we got here, what was that—”
Suddenly an alarm blares through the apartment, high-pitched, rending my ears and seeming to multiply in the air. It sounds like a dying animal, screeching its last, howling.
“What is that?” I yell, and then through the screeching, I hear mom’s voice raised in panic.
She moans wordlessly, sounding more vulnerable and at threat than I’ve ever heard her, sounding like she’s going to lose her mind.
“The fire alarm,” Conrad snarls. “It’s always been too goddamn loud. But they had some trouble a few years back, so they turned it up. Come on. We need to get downstairs.”
“It’s like the night doesn’t want to end,” I say, chuckle without humor.
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Chapter Eleven
Conrad
We stand at the fire assembly point, in a courtyard behind the high rise, as the building manager walks up and down in front of the crowd, trying to calm people’s outrage. I ignore it all, focusing instead on our little cluster – on my woman with her hand on her mother’s shoulder, squeezing softly.
“It’s going to be fine. It’s just a drill.”
“Not a drill,” somebody pipes up from beside us. He’s a younger man I vaguely recognize, a preppy look about him. A banker. “Apparently someone set it off. Some nutcase I bet. Wanted access to the building.”
I glare at him until he feels my stare and turns away, lowering his gaze. He shuffles away from us after that. He can probably see I’m on the verge of unleashing the feral beast inside of me if he continues to make my woman and her mom anxious.
“Did he say someone’s going to break in?” Mrs. Simpkins mutters.
Callie’s jaw clenches. There’s a battle going on inside her, one that is plain to me but invisible to her mother. She’s trying to be as kind and understanding as possible, trying to be patient, but I can sense the strain inside of her. She’s been doing this on her own for too long.
I move forward, forcing myself to look at Mrs. Simpkins instead of Callie.
If I look at my woman, I won’t be able to stop from consuming her with her eyes, the way her luscious thighs call out to me, the memory of the way her body shivered and quaked when my mouth was filled with the delicious tangy taste of her.
I wish I’d made her put on some pants before we came out here because the idea of any bastard looking too long at her perfect legs makes me want to roar.
“Mrs… Janet.” I remember how she asked me to call her that, in one of her more lucid moments. “I promise everything’s going to be fine. I’m personally going to make sure it is, okay?”
She blinks, looking up at me like she’s a child, even if she must only be a couple of years older than me.
“Yes, yes, you’re right. I just—of course. Of course, it is.”
It’s like talking to someone else reminds her of how she’s supposed to behave, pulls her out of the pit for a few moments. But I’m under no delusions that this normalcy will last without real help.
“We’re just checking the building,” the manager says, lifting her hands over the raised voices, dozens of us gathered at this assembly point. She’s a tall woman with a sharp face. “And then it’ll be safe to go back inside. I’m sure.”
I sigh and stand close to my woman, her shoulder brushing against my side, and then without thinking I lift my hand and put my arm around her shoulder.
She’s still for a moment, frozen.
I glance at her and see that she’s staring at her mom, as though awaiting her reaction.
Mrs. Simpkins only glances at us and then immediately away, as though none of this is of any interest to her. A feeling of rage flurries inside of me at that thought.
How can she not care about her daughter finally finding someone who appreciates her?
