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Ransom studies me for a moment in the flickering light of the streetlamp, like he’s trying to gauge how close to the truth my answer was. Then he nods, taking a step closer to me as he reaches up to brush his fingertips over my cheek.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Because I have to admit, when I came home and saw you standing there between the two of them, I was jealous as hell.”
He drops his head toward mine as he finishes speaking, and my pulse skyrockets. “What are you doing?” I whisper breathlessly.
His blue-green eyes bounce between mine as he captures my chin between his thumb and fingers.
“I’ve been staring at your lips all night. I have to know if they taste as sweet as they look.”
When he leans down and kisses me, I almost stop breathing. His mouth is hot on mine, and when he flicks his tongue against my lips, I can feel warm metal from a piercing I didn’t realize he had until now.
An exhale shudders out of me, and I tilt my head up a little, kissing him back. It’s slow at first, almost exploratory, but then it starts to deepen. His pierced tongue slides against mine as his hands fall to my waist, and he uses the light grip to tug me a little closer to him, making me hyper aware of every single place our bodies are touching.
It feels like there’s a fire burning between the two of us, and every stroke of our tongues fans the flame. It doesn’t make any logical sense, but I can’t fight it.
All I can do is take little snatches of air in the moments when our lips part, every cell in my body focused on the way his mouth feels against mine. It’s like I’m on fire and melting at the same time, and when a little moan spills out of my lips, I can’t even feel embarrassed about it. My head is spinning, and I feel like I’m floating, like I might drift away if he wasn’t holding me down.
I lose track of where we are for a bit, and it’s not until I feel Ransom’s hand slipping under my shirt that my brain kicks in again. The light brush of his fingertips against my stomach snaps me out of the daze I was in immediately, and I pull away, not wanting him to touch my scars and be grossed out.
I never let anyone touch them—not that anyone has ever really wanted to.
Part of me is braced for him to get angry that I pushed him away, but he just grins at me and tugs on a lock of my hair, wrapping it lightly around his fingers. Heat still burns in his eyes, and the metal of his eyebrow ring glints in the low light from the streetlamps outside my building.
“I knew you had a wild side,” he murmurs. “I like it. Have a good night, angel. Get some rest.”
He gets back on his motorcycle but doesn’t leave, watching as I make my way toward my building on unsteady legs.
It’s only once I’m inside, the door closing behind me, that I hear the roar of his bike as he pulls away.
19
VICTOR
I’m in my bedroom,frowning at one of the screens in front of me, when Ransom comes back from dropping the girl off at her place. He taps on the doorframe and sticks his head into the room.
“How’s the search going?” he asks. “Any luck?”
“I’m working on it,” I reply, not looking away from my screen. “I’ll let you know.”
“We sure are lucky we’ve got a nerd on our side,” he jokes, fondness in his tone.
I roll my eyes, feeling a smile tugging at my lips. I’ve never been too fazed by Ransom’s teasing. That’s just how he shows affection.
“Anyway, keep us posted,” he says.
“I will. I always do.”
With that, Ransom shuffles off, and I go back to scrubbing through security footage to try to track down the unknown man who was following Willow.
I work backward from the bus stop, trying to figure out where he came from before she saw him hiding in the shadows. If I can get a good enough image of his face, I can do a facial recognition search and figure out who the fuck he is.
Most likely, it has nothing to do with Nikolai, and he’s just some run-of-the-mill pervert who wanted to take advantage of a woman who was alone at night.
But we can’t take the chance. And either way, we have to know who he is.
It’s soothing work, combing through footage, looking at anyone who matches Willow’s—admittedly vague—description of the guy who chased her down the street. There’s a flow to it, a procedure that I follow, and it’s easy to sink into that, letting one thing lead to another in the logical way that they should.
Once I manage to get a clear shot of the man’s face, I run the image through some programs I set up to scan databases for hits that might be a match. My fingers move across the keys with a speed born from muscle memory, but for some reason, I can’t clear my head as completely as I usually do when I work.
