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Getting up and going into her bedroom, I inhaled the heady scent of black cherry, jasmine, and violet. At least that was the description I found online when I googled her perfume after the last time I was here.
Being in her room eased the impatient beast that had come to the surface at her absence from the house, but a quick peek into the bathroom had me pulling up short.
Bras. All different color bras draped around the room. The lace and frills and polka dots and bows filled my imagination with visions of her wearing them. I cursed when the question of who might have seen her in them popped into my mind.
Dammit. That suffocating possessiveness only ever came around with Peyton. I brought this shit onto myself, and I had to deal with the consequences, like the fact that she had been with other men. Like that dickwad Detective Griffin.
Lights flashed through the window.
Fuck. Peyton was home.
I jogged out of the bedroom and punched in the code on the security system my guys had installed, rearming the system before I slipped out the side door.
Far in the trees, flashlight on and pointed to the ground, I found the path that I’d worn into the ground over the past two years. It was the closest I could get to Peyton so I could learn more about her for when the time came.
Reaching my stump in the woods, I slowly sat down, trying not to agitate my balls.
They still twinged with pain hours after Peyton had taken me down. It shouldn’t have been hot, and from anyone else, it would have pissed me off. With Peyton, it sent fire through my veins.
And now in the woods, on my favorite stump, the one that gave me the best view of her cabin, I took in everything I knew about Peyton.
It wasn’t much. I had done a good job of staying in the background. I knew the big picture items. She liked to read and cook, and she’d majored in computers. I needed more. I needed to corner her, protect my balls, and get her talking.
A reaction is a reaction, whether it was good or bad.
Lighting up a blunt, I smiled at the house I had found the listing for and sent to Jeannie, knowing she’d forward it to Peyton. Even though it was falling apart at the time, I knew it was perfect for her.
A place for us to be together, once and for all.
ChapterEight
PEYTON
I squeezed my eyes shut,and when I reopened them, stars danced in my vision.
Two hours straight of staring at my monitors had completely dried out my eyes. Normally that would be my only problem, one I could fix with some eye drops, a cold eye mask, and a twenty-minute break in my bedroom at HQ. Except whenever I closed my eyes for any longer than a blink, Reaper was there. Smiling, getting too close, smelling too good.
If I could, I’d knee him in the balls again for having the audacity to live rent-free in my head. Ten years. It took adecadefor him to apologize. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much though. I’d moved on from his rejection a long time ago. Barely thought about him while I was in the Ghost Unit or since I’d gotten back.
Lie.
Okay, so maybe I’d thought about him during my weak moments. It was a great first kiss before he went and shoved his head all the way up his ass. Whatever. I was over him. Despite how I was acutely aware of his proximity at all times or how his body eclipsed mine in the best kind of way.
Forcing myself to stop thinking about him and go take a break, I locked my screens, but my phone went off just as I stood up.
As did my computer. Alert after alert popped up on both monitors.
I slid back into my chair and pulled up the alert from the system I’d set up to notify me if anything popped up for any of the women we’d rescued.
The alert was from a news conference. I clicked the link and leaned back in my chair as a familiar smug face filled my screen.
“My wife and son are missing. Two weeks ago, they disappeared. While I was away for business, someone snuck into our home and took them. The police have been hard at work but haven’t found any leads. So here I am, begging the public for any information you may have regarding their disappearance.” Lyle Lowenstein stared into the camera, the perfect embodiment of a distraught husband and father holding up a picture of his smiling wife and child.
What a sack of shit.
“Please, they’re my world.” A phone number appeared at the bottom of the screen. “I’m offering a twenty-million-dollar reward for any information that leads to the safe return of my family.
“I speak now to the people who have my wife and child. Please give them back. They are my whole world.”
