Page 70 of Lock Up the Darkness

I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mention it because it’s your business. It would’ve been completely your business if you’d shut the door.”

“Is that the only reason?” Asher asked, that stone-faced, unreadable expression strapped on tight as he tried to pierce through me with that penetrating stare of his.

Good luck.

“What other reason would there be?”

“Answering my questions with other questions again. I sense some defensiveness. What, pray tell, could be the reason for that?”

“Hmm, your extreme paranoia, perhaps?”

Jonah shook his head to himself. “The two of you… damn… butting heads has become a ritual.” A grin pulled at his lips. “Or, more like a twisted form of foreplay.”

Asher wasn’t amused, his obvious need to always have the answers leading the way and making him a real bitch to go up against when you didn’t want to give those answers.

In this case, it wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t, that I was purposely holding it back for some strategic reason, as he might have believed.

It was that I didn’t know.

I wasn’t sure what I’d felt.

It would’ve been simple just to look away and back out of the door the moment I’d happened upon them, the moment I’d seen the depravity taking place, that savage look in Asher’s eyes, how far gone Jonah was from being subjected to it all, how much he’d gotten off on it.

But I hadn’t looked away.

I hadn’t backed away.

And I hadn’t just stood there watching either.

I’d fucking well breathed it in. I’d gotten lost in it too.

Hell, I’d been turned on by it.

More than that, it had called to me on some level I didn’t yet understand.

Yet? What the hell was I—

“Aurora.”

Asher’s voice pulled me from my thoughts and I looked to see him staring at me curiously, obviously wondering where my mind had just gone.

He wanted inside my head too much.

And I wanted to believe that it was just him trying to do his due diligence and to ensure there would be no fallout or anything biting him in the ass from me working with them on this mission ahead of us.

His interest going beyond that… I couldn’t let that compute.

Even the part of me that wanted to allow it.

Because there was something there, some connection that threatened to burn too deep if I gave into it even just slightly. And that wouldn’t just serve to complicate an already incredibly complicated situation, it also threatened to invite weakness in the form of vulnerability.

“I don’t know,” I finally responded.

He arched a dark eyebrow. “What?”

“I'm not sure.”

Intrigue shone in his eyes. “So there’s conflict there?”

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