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“Mia! C’mon, let’s talk! Someone let me in downstairs.”
“Please go away, Brent!” I call through the door. “Look, I’m really busy right now and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you just showing up.”
“Hey, you’re the one that kept leading me on, bitch!”
So, asshole Brent is back, I guess. I shake my head. “Please leave!”
He pounds on the door again. “Not until you…” the knob twists, and I almost scream when the door just swings open. I amsucha small-town idiot. My freaking door wasn’t locked. Brent steps in, looking pissed. “C’mon, Mia!” he yells. He kicks the door shut behind him and moves towards me.
I gasp and back up, almost tripping over the coffee table. I drop my tea, and I scream when it shatters. Broken porcelain and scalding liquid hits my bare legs, beneath the frayed hem of my cutoffs. “Brent! You can’t just come in here!”
“You know why I took you out the other night?”
I shake my head. My heart is racing in terror, and I start to wonder how fast I can grab my phone and call the police. Brent looks so angry and mean right now, and he keeps moving towards me. I’ve never been this scared before, and I start to tear up. “Brent, please just…”
“Cause I wanted to fuck you, that’s why,” he spits. “I could’ve gone out with a real sure thing that night, but I went out with you instead. And then you play fucking innocent, won’t have a fucking drink, bring me back here—”
“I didn’t bring you back here!” I snap. “You offered to walk me home and I was stupid enough to say yes!” I reach behind me, my fingers searching the windowsill for my phone. Brent keeps coming closer, until he’s right in front of me.
“You sent me home with some real fuckin’ blue balls the other night, Mia,” he hisses. “Let’s not do that this time.”
I start to scream, when suddenly, there’s a crashing sound. Brent whirls, and we both stare in shock at the door to the apartment hanging askew off the hinges. A huge, hulking shape barges through. I realize it’s a man, and my jaw drops. He’s enormous, and broad-shouldered, and grizzled looking. Long hair wild around his furious face, hardened ice-blue eyes, and a sneer on his lips.
He’s hard and terrifying looking. But he also might be the most gorgeous man I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“You,” he snarls in a deep, thundering, baritone voice. He jabs a finger at Brent and barrels through the apartment towards him. “Get thefuckaway from her.”
2
Hunter
The dirt feelsgood in my hands. I run my fingers through it, grabbing the base of the dandelion weed and yanking it out. I frown at the damn thing and toss it in the pile with the rest I’ve dug out so far this morning. How the hell these little fuckers get all the way up here is beyond me.
The sun warms my face, and for a moment, I can escape. Up here, if I concentrate, I can block out the sounds of this goddamn city and pretend I’m back in nature—back home, where I belong. I never asked for any of this. I never wanted the city, or the money. But here I am, chained and kept like a beast roaming a cage.
It was years ago, after the Marines when I was living out on the edge of a mountain in the woods, that I invented it. I wasn’t even trying to make the next “it” thing, I was just looking for a way to get better airflow through the small stove in my cabin. A guy from town who was up to fix my truck mentioned that a slightly altered version would do wonders for a car exhaust. That got me thinking. I tinkered some more, and all of a sudden, I had something big.
It’s called the AirCleanse. The short version is, the thing fits onto the exhausts of big vehicles like big rig trucks or city busses and cuts emissions in half. It also ups the miles per gallon considerably. When I realized what I had, I fielded out some queries. I wasn’t at all prepared for the response.
Basically, every damn city in the country wanted this thing for their transit bus fleets. Every shipping company wanted it for their trucks. Overnight, I went from a nobody vet living in the woods to holding the sole patent to world’s next iPhone or seatbelt.
New York pitched me and my accountant the best tax structure, so I started the company here and set up offices on the top floor of a new building. I went from jeans and plaid shirts to six-thousand-dollar suits made by tailor’s flown in from Seville Row in London. I became a literal billionaire overnight, and I hated it.
I was all set to just sell the damn company and go back to my life. But then I found out the AirCleanse can do more than clean up exhaust and stretch a tank of gas. With some slight modifications, it also makes one hell of difference with how accurate drone-to-ground missiles are, and how far they’ll fly. The government and every defense contractor in the world wanted my invention, because their missile modification is covered by my patent.
I couldn’t allow that. I’ve seen and caused too much death. I’ve seen the indiscriminate havoc drone missiles wreck on towns full of civilians unknowingly shielding terrorists. The idea of my invention adding to that carnage made me sick. So I stayed, to keep control of my company and my invention.
But the defense companies are tricky and relentless motherfuckers. One, a company called Steel Edge, managed to infiltrate my company. They got a lawyer in on my payroll, and the sneaky fuck got me when I was exhausted after a long week of meetings. He got me to sign something I only glanced at, and that signature made me a prisoner.
What I signed was an amendment clause to my company bylaws. It essentially says that the moment I leave the office, I give up my seat as the CEO and president. If that happens, my small board will take over. At this point though, they’re all traitors who would love to sell out to Steel Edge for a fat check. So to keep from breaking the clause, I did the only thing I could think of: I never left the office.
That was three years ago, and it’s my home now. There’s still the sign on the front door for AirCleanse Tech, but inside, it’s now my penthouse. The walls are now windows. I tore down half the office space and meeting rooms and made myself a huge outdoor garden space. I couldn’t get back to nature, so I brought nature to me. If I leave, the military gets my design, and my invention kills people. I can’t have that, so here I am.
There’s one clause that could save me. But, it’s a joke at this point. I can leave without consequence for a “family emergency.” Except my family is all dead. A lawyer friend of mine pointed out that it could mean “wife,” but that’s laughable. I live in a glass cage thirty stories above the city streets. It’s a little tough to get dates living like this, much less to meet your soulmate.
I stand and brush the dirt off my hands across my jeans. I know I’m surrounded by New York City, but if I close my eyes and inhale, I can pretend I’m in the woods again. I open them and walk to the edge of the roof to look over.
The first thing I see is her. Something stirs in me, like it has every time I’ve laid eyes on her. My large frame bristles, and a fierce hunger takes hold of me. This is what she does to me.
