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5
Panic Room
Rick wasby my side in seconds, his pistol out and his face tight with concern. “You need to come with me. Now.”
“What is it?” I groaned, not at all happy about being yanked out of dreamland.
The cat and dog, thanks to the piercing alarm, were completely alert and looking to me for comfort, but when I tried to get to my feet, I stumbled to my knees on the soft rug in front of my sofa.
Apparently, I’d been napping with my legs curled up underneath me, and they’d fallen asleep to the point where I couldn’t even stand on them. I tried to boost myself up by pushing against the coffee table, and while that got my butt back on the sofa, I wasn’t going anywhere on my own two legs.
“Oh my god, I can’t—”
But Rick was there in less than a second. Holstering his pistol, he scooped me up in his arms, carrying me as if I were light as a feather towards my master bedroom. My brain was still slightly foggy but I got where we were going and looked behind Rick to make sure my pets followed closely.
I had a regular bedroom door but in case of emergency, another one could be activated that was four-inch-thick steel alloy, which would slide into place with the push of a button. In fact, the entire room was lined with the same thick steel and was bullet proof, fireproof, and every other kind of proof a lover of security would have a wet dream over.
It had come with the penthouse, apparently having been built by the guy I bought it from, who’d been a security freak.
I’d called it a ‘panic room,’ which the security team had laughed about, telling me I’d seen too many movies.
But hell, that’s what it was, right?
“In,” Rick said to Seth, who was already at the doorway with his own pistol out. Rick followed with me in his arms, Seth leading. Parker was already inside.
Not wearing a shirt. Interesting.
Rick set me down on the edge of my bed and pushed my TV out of the way to access a cabinet showing security camera feeds from all around the apartment.
“You lose your shirt, man?” Rick asked while enlarging the camera thumbnails.
“I was shaving,” Parker said, continuing to wipe his face with the towel around his shoulders.
I’d never seen him shirtless. Actually, I’d never seen any of the guys shirtless. Of course, I’d noticed how buff they were through their clothes. Not to mention handsome. I wasn’t blind. But I was always so in my head, trying to fight off the overwhelm that came with my life, that I’d not paid any more attention than that.
It was like driving down the street and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty house.’
And that’s it. You don’t look at it twice, and never think about it again.
Which is kind of fucked up, when I thought about it—going through life with my head so far up my ass I could hardly give the security team tasked with keeping me alive the time of day.
Maybe I was in a slightly more observant mood because I’d just been awakened from a sex dream, and to open my eyes to these men, well...
Get a grip, idiot.
But I couldn’t help but stare at Parker, whose chest was covered in tattoos of swirling symbols crisscrossing each other, as well as a couple that looked less than professionally done. It made sense. I’d heard the rumors that Parker, also known as ‘Mr. Tech,’ picked up a lot of his driving and computer skills on the wrong side of the law.
“You were shaving in my bathroom?” I asked.
“You were asleep, Miss Connor,” Parker explained, shrugging. “The water pressure’s a lot better in this bathroom than mine.”
And how the hell did he know that?
They often stayed in my place while I was gone. Guess nothing was off-limits.
But it wasn’t the time to complain about petty shit. The freaking alarm had gone off, and I had no idea what the hell was going on.
The cat and dog spread out on my bed like it was any other day.
