Page 46 of Whispers in the Dark

“Just a minute! I’m coming!” I replied in a heated whisper. The noise ceased for the moment and I undid the locks, yanking open the door to face the man who had caused me a lot of angst the last several weeks.

“It’s a bit late for a social call isn’t it?” I snarked.

Adrian stared at me, as if he wasn’t sure I was a real person.

“I need to see you,” he said, his tone oddly flat. He shifted on his feet, looking past me. I knew what he was looking for.

“My bodyguard is actually at the emergency vet.” It wouldn’t benefit me to lie. Obviously, the dog was not here or he would have already been growling and showing teeth. With a nod, his gaze swung back to me.

“I need to see you,” he repeated.

Feeling extra bitchy, I made a downward sweeping motion with my hand. “Here I am. You’ve seen me. Satisfied?”

Adrian shook his head. “No. You know what I mean.”

Did he actually think…?

“I’m not a booty call, Adrian. If that’s what you came for, you can go back to your impersonal penthouse.”

Again, he shook his head. “You’re missing the point, Brynn.” His tone sounded tight and his body language was agitated.

Not wanting to draw attention to a man standing on my porch, I stepped aside to allow him entry. High energy was rolling off of him and the longer he was around me, the more intense it seemed to get.

Something was weirder than usual. I wasn’t afraid of Adrian, but I was on high alert. Closing the door, I locked it, then turned to find him extremely close to me. Placing a hand on his chest, I gently pushed at him to make him take a step back. Feeling the muscles beneath his T-shirt was like a jolt to my libido. Dammit. I couldn’t think about any of that.

Skirting past him, I made my way into the kitchen with him close on my heels. I need water and I bet he could use some, too.Grabbing two glasses, I filled them both, sliding one closer to him while I drained the other. He just stood there, watching me but saying nothing.

“You’re going to have to explain a bit more about your reason for this visit. It’s three in the morning, and I’ve had a shit night. My dog is costing me a shit-ton of money because he decided to eat a toxic plant. A plant, I might add, that my neighbor had given me as a Christmas gift. You remember Kevin, my neighbor? The one who looks after my dog when I work late or go out of town? He thought he was doing a nice thing. And it was a nice thing, it just had something in it that apparently is a no-no for animals. I’m lucky Lug Nut weighs as much as he does or it might have ended up differently.”

I was babbling. I knew I was babbling, but it was unnerving to have this man in my house, standing mere feet from me, but not really participating in conversation, or even telling me more about why he had decided to cross town to come to my house.

Suddenly, his eyes darted to the bookshelf where the picture of me and my sister sat. He made a beeline for that bookshelf and picked up the photo. I had reframed it after he’d broken the other one. Thankfully, the picture itself had not been damaged.

“Blair was your sister,” he said matter of factly, running a finger over her face. His jaw tensed and released and I watched his grip tighten on the frame.

“Don’t you dare break that one, too,” I said. He set the photo down firmly, then looked at others. Some were photos of Lug Nut, some were of my dad. Some were recent shots of my dad and me. There was one picture of my dad, Blair, and me taken the Christmas before she had been killed. She hadn’t wanted to take that shot, but we had convinced her to pose. I was incredibly thankful that Blair had relented and posed with us.

“Blair was your sister,” he said again. What the hell was going on? Was Adrian on something? This whole interaction was beginning to creep me out.

“I already said yes. You can see for yourself in the pictures.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Why would I tell you? I had no idea the two of you ever met. I knew nothing about that part of her private life and I knew nothing about you.”

“You joined Olympus under false pretense.”

“Is that what this conversation is going to be, Adrian? You’re going to stand here and detail every one of my sins? If that’s the case, I’d prefer to have this discussion during regular business hours. This could have waited, you know. There was no need to interrupt my awful sleeping.”

He shook his head again. “I needed to see you.”

“For fuck’s sake. I’m here. You’re here. I see you. You see me. You’re not saying anything that really makes sense to me, nor are you truly helping me understand whyyouare here. If you can’t do that, then it’s probably a good idea to come back at another time.” I turned to walk toward the front door and I felt strong male fingers on my arm.

“You’d used Blair’s credentials to get in the server, then you created your own account,” he said hotly. “You lurked in that space. You were spying.”

“No, I was not spying.” I said indignantly. “That’s not why I joined. I was trying to understand my sister. I was trying to make sense of her death. Don’t you get it? Getting a feel for that server I thought would help me figure out why she died.” I continued. “She never told me anything about the lifestyle, or how she had discovered she was submissive. I thought she had shared everything with me, but I have since discovered that there is quite a lot she kept to herself. It’s been eye-opening andhumbling to find out my sister had a whole different side to who she was.” I got a bit brave then. “She loved you.”

Adrian yanked me closer at those words until our bodies were almost touching. “That was her mistake,” he said, the words extremely tight and controlled. “She knew the rules.”

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