Page 45 of Broken Lines

“Fuck you.”

“Honey and vinegar, sweetheart,” he grunts. “Honey and vinegar.”

“Fitting you keep saying that what with being as obnoxious as the fly you seem to think Iwantto attract.”

He smirks.

“Buzz buzz, baby.”

I glare at him, feeling my face flush I spite of myself as he turns and strolls causally out of the room. I grumble to myself, turning before my eyes land on the blankets tossed across the couch.

The ones he clearly slept in.

My core knots.

But screw it. What else do I have? I grab one of them, along with my wet backpack, and stomp down the hall to the second door, which leads down to his basement…a perfectly normal, regular basement. Or at least a perfectly normal regular basement for a mansion built almost two hundred years ago, I guess.

Just like when I first set foot in the house upstairs, part of me expects to find some sort of sex dungeon or some other hedonistic rockstar wildness down here. Pleasure slaves chained to the wall. A drug farm. Something else to allude to the hedonistic infamy of the man who lives here.

Instead, I find a perfectly normal washer and dryer next to a shelf holding fabric softener and dryer sheets.

It’s so normal it’s almost off-putting.

I strip quickly, shivering when the cold air hits my wet, clammy skin. My mind wanders to the thought of security cameras, or some other less noble reason for him to have surveillance down here, and I quickly wrap the blanket around myself.

I’m tossing my clothes into the dryer when it hits me.

The scent of him, wrapping around me as tightly as the blanket. My chest constricts, my body shivering with a dark, throbbing heat as the masculine, woodsy, horribly and disturbinglyattractivescent of the devil from upstairs invades my senses.

Like a virus.

Like a black magic potion.

Like something dirty and private I should look away from. But instead, can’t stop voyeuristically staring at.

An electrically sensual feeling tingles over my skin, puckering my nipples and quickening my pulse. I blush fiercely, trying to push it to the side and explain it away. Maybe Ididhit my head today. Or maybe the peanut butter I ate upstairs was past its prime.

Or maybe being around Jackson is intoxicating me, like being around mercury fumes, or asbestos.

I shiver, tightening the blanket around myself as I quickly set the dryer for thirty minutes and then step back.

But then, I’m faced with a choice. Do I…hang out in the dimly lit basement of a creepy old house I’ve never been in before? Naked except for a blanket that smells intoxicatingly like a viciously magnetic rock god wrapped around me? Or do I venture back upstairs, entering the lair of said viciously magnetic rock god? Again, naked, except for his blanket wrapped around me.

It’s an impossible decision. But eventually, I end up splitting the difference.

I manage about nine minutes in the basement before the shadows get the best of me. Then, I’m scampering back up the stairs, clutching my phone, swaddling the blanket as many times around me as it’ll go before I step into living room again.

But this time, it’s empty.

No Jackson.

I’m halfway back down the long, elegant if not dusty hallway before I stop myself. What am I doing?Lookingfor him?

I pause, frowning at myself. The crude, drunken, obnoxiously attractive man of the housenotbeing in the living room—especially when all I’m dressed in is a blanket and his scent—is a good thing.

That’s agreatthing, actually.

So why the hell am I seeking him out, when I should be setting up barricades? Or lighting a signal fire outside for a rescue from this place?

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