Page 51 of Kissing Danger

The door opened behind me, but I was too busy double checking my clothing to care. During the heat of the moment, I’d thought about walking out of the bathroom wearing the evidence of our tryst, but that was just a fantasy. I didn’t actually want people to see me in sex-stained clothes.

“A little slut, aren’t you?” someone said behind me.

Before I could turn around to give the stranger a piece of my mind, something hard and cold pressed against the small of my back.

“Shut up and don’t say a word,” the man spoke directly into my ear.

Unlike with Nathan, there was nothing sexy about his tone.

Looking in the mirror, I got a good look at the man standing directly behind me. He was large in a muscular way, though notunusually so, with a face just handsome enough to be pleasant to look at without drawing too much attention.

It was the kind of face I might give a second glance, but not a third or a fourth.

All of this information filtered through my brain like white noise. None of it mattered. The only thing my attention focused on was the gun pointed at my back.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

Faster than I could see, the butt of his gun struck the back of my head.

“I said, shut up. Now, come with me. My boss wants a word.”

The blow left me dizzy, but not seriously hurt. My vision blurred for a moment, but quickly cleared as the man marched me out of the bathroom, always keeping his gun trained on my back.

Outside, the hallway was empty. Off to my left, the noise of the after-party echoed off the walls. For one moment, I considered calling for help. Surely, if I screamed loud enough, someone would hear, and Nathan would realize I was in trouble.

But what if it wasn’t enough?

With so many people in one room, their voices could even drown out a gunshot. Not to mention the music playing over everything. Even if I shouted at the top of my lungs, the guests in the ballroom probably wouldn’t hear me, and I would enrage my kidnapper for nothing.

Uncertainty kept me silent, and I was herded off to the right, away from ballroom.

I thought my kidnapper would take me out of the hotel, whisking me off into some lethal unknown. Instead, they dragged me over to the hotel’s service elevator. My kidnapper hit the button for the top floor, and the doors closed behind us with a cheery little ding. The gun digging into the small of my back dissuaded me from causing any problems as we waited for the ride to end, though I didn’t need the reminder. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could fight a professional criminal, and even if I could, there was nowhere for me to go trapped inside a metal box.

On the thirty-sixth floor, the door opened into the penthouse suite. A neutral palette of cream and beige met my eye, with unassuming pictures of flowers acting as the only accent color. I’d never been to the top floor of such a fancy hotel. The Bellagio even put the hotel I’d visited with Nathan to shame.

For a moment, I almost forgot that I had been kidnapped as I looked around, taking in the details. The space was tastefully decorated, but a little boring. For something so expensive, I expected more.

I was quickly reminded of my situation, however, as the gun dug harder against my back, forcing me to walk forward into the room’s main sitting area.

My eye was drawn first to the woman standing just off to the side. Caprice Vidales was easy to recognize, but she looked a little different than the last time I saw her. Her black hair was still cut into its usual harsh bob, but it was frazzled, like she hadn’t spent as much time as usual styling it into perfection. There were bags under her eyes, which she had applied a thicker layer of makeup over to try and cover, and she stood with an obvious stoop to her posture.

One hand hovered in front of her stomach, as if protecting it. Although I couldn’t see it, I had no doubt that there was some heavy bandaging under her clothes. The knife wound to the stomach that Nathan had given her was obviously causing her problems.

Too bad it hadn’t killed her.

The vicious thought made me pause.

I’d never been so bloodthirsty before.

In the past, whenever I’d thought about wanting someone dead, it had never been serious. Now, I knew with absolute certainty that if I had a chance to kill Caprice Vidales, I would without hesitation.

Was this Nathan’s influence?

Maybe.

It was hard to say. Certainly, my new attitude toward violence had appeared at the same time he entered my life, but I couldn’t say for certain that he was the cause. Until recently, I’d never faced a situation where I legitimately feared for my life or the life of someone I cared about.

Kiki and I were bullied growing up. Even when we pretended to date each other, people in our conservative neighborhood could still sense there was something different about us. We’d often faced bullying, but it was rarely more than harsh words. On the rare occasions when the bullying turned physical, the biggest threat had been scrapes and bruises.

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