“Well, I was inaneighborhood.” He leaned to sniff my neck. “Seems like Jenny wasn’t the only one being naughty.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
He held my gaze. “I don’t need to arrest you to tie you up.”
A pleasant shiver ran down my spine, settling in my crotch.
Hayden cleared his throat. “Sorry. I should be more careful with my words.”
“What do you mean?”
“The tying-you-up thing.”
It took me a few moments to understand his meaning. “If you can’t speak freely with me, I don’t think we should speak at all.”
“Jonah—”
“I’m not a delicate flower, and I can’t have you walking on eggshells around me. It’s not fair to either of us.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. I hear you. No eggshells. Promise.” He glanced at my side of the studio. “Show me what you’ve been working on.”
I went over my recent pieces—those I needed to send to buyers, and those I was hoping to sell so they wouldn’t end up collecting dust. Hayden listened to my explanations, asking questions about my technique and running his fingers over metal and copper. When we started dating, I thought he was only humoring me by pretending to care about my art, but he insisted on learning about my work, and I grew excited to share it with him.
After I finished going over everything, Hayden hugged me from behind, resting his chin on my head. “I can listen to you talk for hours, but I wouldn’t mind a nude demonstration next time.”
I turned around to face him. “I did itoncebecause you bugged me for weeks, and I told you not to get used to it.”
“If I remember correctly, I made it worth your while—right here on this desk. And on the couch. And against that wall…”
“Okay, I remember!” Nobody could make me blush like he could. “Want to head up to the roof? The mattress should be in the closet.”
“Lead the way.”
The‘Hipster’s Mattress’was hidden behind some of Jenny’s junk. I’d received that mattress as a gift from a dance group thatused to practice on the first floor. They called themselves‘The Hipsters,’which wasn’t a name real hipsters would ever use.
When we got to the roof, we wiped the dust from the mattress and lay down next to each other. It was already dark, but there weren’t a lot of stars so close to the city. At least the moon was almost full. We were far enough from the road to enjoy a peaceful silence.
“I bought a gun,” I said, wanting to get it off my chest.
He turned his face to me. “Really? You were less than thrilled when we talked about it.”
“I still don’t like it, but there’s no point pretending I’m not in danger.”
“Which one did you get?”
“A Glock 19.”
“Good choice. Let’s make sure you’ll never use it.” He cleared his throat. “I tried to talk to the Chief about the investigation again.”
“How did it go?”
“Horribly. It turned into a fight until he threw me out of his office.”
“Please don’t lose your job because of this.”
“I won’t lose my job. At least now I know his decision is final. Anyway, I pulled out all the missing person cases in LA from the last twenty years involving male actors. You said not everyone they kidnapped came from acting, but I wanted to narrow the search. I came up with eighteen names, almost all of them from over ten years ago. Seems as if The Society has either slowed down or shifted the focus elsewhere.”
“I remember hearing that their numbers were dwindling.”
