Page 23 of Discord
I swatted at the annoying hand moving a piece of hair off my face.
“Mia.” This time the voice was accompanied by a shoulder shake.
“Leave me alone,” I mumbled when my pillow was also wrenched away, making me squawk.
“Mia, wake up.”
I had only just gone to sleep. Who the hell was waking me up already? It was a male’s voice. Milo?
No. Milo wouldn’t be here after our WWIII fight. Not Reid either. Dad wouldn’t enter my bedroom without knocking.
I opened my swollen eyes, but the blackout curtains in my room were drawn. There wasn’t a stitch of lighting. In the dark, I could barely make out the figure of a shadow.
A sudden sense of danger dawned on me. I opened my mouth to gasp when a hand slapped over it, muffling my voice. I thrashed, swimming in sleep and fear, barely conscious or aware of what was happening.
A hand hooked around my back to haul me out of bed. I wasn’t set down, my back pressing against the rugged build of the perpetrator instead. With a hand still covering my mouth, my thrashing body was dragged out of the room.
Fan-fucking-tastic. After all the lectures I ignored, I was now being kidnapped. Great! Just Great!
I am never going to hear the end of this.
Mia
“Areyou going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked Brandon from the passenger seat.
Brandon scared me half to death by dragging me out of bed at an ungodly hour of the morning, all the while covering my mouth to silence my screams. I only tampered down upon recognizing his scent. According to Brandon, I was too loud in my protests at being kidnapped. It wasn’t a gracious awakening, to say the least.
At least, he had the good sense of grabbing a pair of my ballet flats before carrying me out of the house, uncaring if we ran into others. He stuffed me into the passenger seat of his car, which was another surprise since his car was supposedly parked in his garage. Did he return to his apartment building to pick it up?
We had been on the road for five minutes, and Brandon had been in a mood for all of it, not up for answering my questions. Tough. When you kidnapped someone, basic etiquette dictated some indication of either demand or destination. He had provided me neither.
“Hello?” I poked his shoulders. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“My apartment,” he replied shortly.
A sinking feeling settled into my stomach. I glanced at Brandon in bewilderment, connecting the dots. There was only one reason to take me to his apartment.
Sex.
But why the sudden change of heart?
For weeks, he had drilled it into my head that sex was off the table. He had a momentary slip when I sought him out. Afterward, I located the fastest-acting method of birth control I could get my hands on and had a vaginal ring inserted, though I had been advised to still use protection. The precaution ended up being a moot point. Brandon turned cold after our near encounter in the pantry. I had also maintained my distance. Fraternizing with me might ruin his life and the last thing I wanted was for Brandon to get into trouble.
However, kidnapping a minor from her bed was the precipice of inviting trouble into your life. “Milo tracks my phone,” I reminded pointedly. Despite our recent hostility, Milo would call the cops if he found out I was at Brandon’s apartment.
He shrugged, undaunted. “I left your phone behind.”
It sounded straightforward. No one knew of our whereabouts, so we had a few uninterrupted hours. “When did you wake up?” I asked next.
“Early.”
“And why are you taking me to your apartment?”
“Because you’ve never been.”
“Right. So, why are you taking me to your apartment?” I repeated.
Brandon’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. Hammering sexual tension bubbled between us and I dropped the subject. Honestly, I was merely relieved to have an outlet for my family drama. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t particularly concerned with Milo’s opinion or immersed in guilt for wanting Brandon. His salacious reasons were irrelevant if Brandon didn’t care about the risks, either.
