Page 13 of His

“Why are you here?”

He stood facing me, his flat eyes accusing me. I gulped.

“I... I was curious. About the paper.”

He stepped forward so that our faces were only inches away from each other. I smelled him again, the subtle aftershave mixed now with sweat from his exertions. There was another smell, too, underneath all that. The smell of blood, coppery and bitter.

In spite of everything, I remembered the last time we’d been so close together, in the elevator. I remembered his fierce kiss, the passion that swelled up and tore my breath from my lungs. Even standing so close to him now, I felt the same terrible desire come racing through my body, turning me hot between the thighs. I knew he was dangerous, but my body didn’t care.

“Curious. You seem like a curious one.”

He looked at me like nobody else had ever done before. I was used to guys giving me a quick once-over, their eyes sweeping across my face and down my body in a blink. His eyes, though, caressed the lines of my face with a penetrating gaze that I could almost feel on my skin. He reached out and touched my chin, and I flinched at the touch, thinking of blood.

“Like a curious little kitten.”

His hand moved down trailing over the seams of my clothing. He touched my waistband, sliding his fingers around the back, over my pockets. He stopped and slid his hand into my back pocket. I held my breath, but he simply pulled out my car keys and put them in his own pocket. In my other jeans pocket he found the slip of paper.

“There it is,” I said.

“What? This?” He unfolded it and glanced down at the numbers. “Is this some sort of code?”

“That’s what I was curious about,” I said. My heart was pounding. Was he working for the government? Maybe he was a trained killer. Then there was no way he could kill me. I clung to that small bit of hope. “What does it mean?”

But he only raised his eyebrows.

“How should I know what it means? Looks like a bunch of random numbers to me.”

“It’s not... it’s not yours?”

Fabio shook his head slowly, peering at me as though I was the crazy one.

“But my friend told me—”

I cut myself off as I realized exactly what had happened.

Jules!

What did she say?Maybe you can ask him to explain it to you.Holy shit. She faked it. She faked a stupid secret note so that I would talk to him again. And it worked, better than she could ever have imagined.

Or worse than she ever could have imagined.

Jules, you have no idea what you’ve done to me.

“A mistake, perhaps?”

“My friend...” I choked on the words. “She wanted me to talk to you.”

“That makes more sense,” the man said, relief coming over his face. “Yes, more sense than you being with the police. Here I was thinking that they might be onto me! But no, it’s only... it’s only you.”

The man finished patting me down and then took my arm.

“Look what you’ve caught, kitten,” he said, smiling. “Come here.”

His arm came around my waist again and I walked with him for a few steps before realizing that he was taking me to the kitchen. The man inside on the table moaned.

“No,” I cried. “I don’t want to see—”

“Too bad, little kitten,” he said, pulling me along with him. I stopped walking at the doorway but he was too strong: he simply dragged me the rest of the way. He pulled me inside and dropped me next to the radiator in the corner before rummaging through a kitchen drawer. I clutched my bad leg and stared at the man on the table.

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