Page 11 of Inked Adonis

But fuck it—the past is gone and I refuse to be a prisoner to it.

I press play.

“…I’d give him the Rufus treatment and hump the life out of him…”

Even through the tinny speaker, I’d know that voice anywhere. The Rufus reference is just confirmation.

I increase the volume and bend in a little closer.

“…andwhen he’s standing right in front of me, I strip.”

The more she talks, the harder I get. Little Nova Pierce has plans for me, and the heat rising under my skin at every word seems eager to play along. I could let her take charge for one night—as long as I get to take my turn, too.

The recording ends too soon. I immediately scroll back, stopping randomly just to hear that breathy voice again.

“We’re just getting started, though. I’m not done with him yet.”

Maybe I’m not done with the little dogwalker, either.

Maybe I’m just getting started.

4

NOVA

“I am going to kill you! With a capital K. And a capital I. All the capital letters,” I cry out. “Because that’s how much I mean it.”

Hope, my soon-to-be-dead best friend, has the audacity to yawn. “It’s seven in the morning, Nova. Can we schedule my execution for a more reasonable hour?”

“He. Texted. Back.”

Silence crackles between us as Hope’s brain catches up to exactly why I’m going to K-I-L-L her. “Who? What? Wait… Are we talking about who I think we’re talking about here?”

“The man you sent my sex fantasy to? That’d be the one, yeah.” I pace across the threadbare six feet between my bedroom wall and my bathroom door. “Hence the murder. Yours, to be specific.”

“Holy—” She suddenly sounds much less drowsy. “What did he say?”

“No idea. I saw his name on my screen—thanks for entering him as a contact in my phone, by the way, you psycho—then I got on the phone to yell at you. Obviously.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Hope’s voice rises an octave. “You wake me up at ass o’clock to threaten my life, and you haven’t even read the message?”

“Of course I haven’t!” I screech. “What part of ‘you sent him an audio file of me saying I wanted to climb him like a tree’ are you not grasping?”

Hope just chuckles, completely immune to my panic. “Since you woke me up, you now need to pay the tea toll. Tell me what he said.”

“It’s probably a restraining order.”

“Nah, that would be hand-delivered.”

“Spoken like someone familiar with the process.”

“You know what?” she fires back. “If bringing together two people who are obviously into each other with one little audio file is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. ‘Arrest me, officer. I did it in the name of love.’”

“It wasn’t love.” My teeth grind together. “And he wasn’t into me!”

I may or may not have replayed our conversation a dozen times last night, dissecting every little morsel into piles of “He’s not interested”and “He wants me,”but I’ll never tell Hope which side won. It would only spur her on, and the last thing my best friend needs is encouragement. Men like Samuil Litvinov don’t slum it with girls who walk dogs for a living.

“Really?” Hope’s voice drips with skepticism. “Then why did he text you?”

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