Page 14 of Dark Horse

“Good. I’m glad one of us was enjoying ourselves.”

“Listen. I’m sorry about the handyman. I fucked up. Was he able to fix it?” I ask as I make my way into the kitchen. Iset my purse down in one of the chairs at the dining room table, and my eyes fall on my computer. It’s sitting square in front of Grant in a place I definitely did not leave it.

“He was.” He doesn’t flinch as he watches me.

“What are you doing with that?”

“With this?” He holds up the laptop and then looks between me and the device.

“Yes.” I eye it nervously, grateful when I remember I left it password protected.

“Well… funny fucking thing is, when you weren’t here and the apartment was so messy it looked like it could have been tossed over by someone, I got real fucking worried. Especially when I called your phone a dozen times, and you didn’t bother to pick up.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I was on the trail.”

“And after the trail when you were showering? When you got in the car to come back home? At any other fucking point today?” I hear his temper rising in his voice.

“I saw you called and figured this was more bullshit about the shots or the money I owe you. I didn’t care to hear about either when I was dealing with every other problem under the sun, so I decided to wait to call you back.” I give it back to him two-fold. I don’t need his lectures tonight. I need him gone so I can get on to chat with my subscribers and then get down to the bar. Gemma had called off, and that meant I was up. This day refused to end. “Can we please just do this some other time? I have shit to do.”

“Nah. You can have a seat though.”

“I have work to do,” I insist, refusing to sit down.

“It can wait.”

“It can’t. I’m busy, and I don’t need whatever asinine lecture you’re about to give me about answering my phone and putting things on my calendar.”

“Oh, this lecture’s going to be a lot more than that.”

“Yeah. I don’t need your bullshit. I thought we covered this the other day.”

He slams his open palm on the table.

“Sit. The. Fuck. Down. Hartfield.” He booms, and his lashes barely lift to reveal blue eyes that are positively glacial. My heart clicks up a notch in my chest. I normally don’t fear him, but sometimes, like right now, even I worry I’ve pushed him too far.

I drop my ass in the chair reluctantly and give him an expectant look. He doesn’t say another word; he just opens the lid of my computer, and I nearly choke on my words trying to stop him.

“What are you doing? Don’t touch that!” I reach for it, trying to tear it out of his grasp, but he artfully dodges me, punching numbers into the keyboard and then turning the screen around.

“Why? Because of this?” he asks as I’m faced with my mostly naked body on full display.

The heat races up my neck and colors my cheeks. I thought no one would ever find these. At least, not anyone I knew. I’d gone to great lengths to keep it a secret. And now the last person on earth I’d ever want to know is staring at it. Has possibly seen all of it. I want todie.

He hits another button, and a voice memo I’d sent to one of my subscribers starts playing. It’s my voice, husky and overheated. The sound of my vibrator in the background.

“I wish it was you with me right now. Wish it was your hands on me.” Voice-memo me gasps and then lets out a soft whimper. “Would you fuck me with your tongue or would you—” Grant cuts me short when he presses another button.

The silence between us stretches on, moving from deeply uncomfortable to tortuously long in nature.

“Should I keep going?” He breaks it finally, nodding to the computer.

“You’ve made your point.”

“Have I? Because when I was worried something happened to you and I went looking for information…” His tone is lethal as he speaks. “Finding this? I thought one of these sick fucks could have taken you. I thought you could be lost to the fucking wind. Stuck in his basement being used for some madman’s amusement.”

“Well. I’m not.” I state the obvious.

“You’renot. Instead, you just disappear. Blowing off your responsibilities—”

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