He freezes when he sees me in his clothes. Something raw and hungry flashes across his face before he shuts it down.
“Get some sleep,” he says roughly. “We’ll continue this in the morning.”
“Continue what? You asking questions I’m not going to answer?”
He’s across the room before I can blink, hand fisting in the collar of the too-big shirt, hauling me up onto my toes.
“You think this is a game?” His voice is low and lethal. “You think I’m playing with you?”
“I think you don’t know what you want.”
“I knowexactlywhat I want.” His grip tightens. “I want answers. I want the truth. I want to know if any of it—” He stops. His jaw works. “I want you totalk to me, for fuck’s sake.”
“Then you’re going to be disappointed.”
For one endless moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. Or strangle me. The line between the two has never felt thinner.
But he just shoves me back onto the bed and stalks to the door.
“You’ll break eventually,” he says without turning around. “Everyone does.”
The door slams.
The lock clicks.
I curl up on sheets that smell like fabric softener and stare at the ceiling, counting my heartbeats, wondering how many I have left.
CHAPTER 34
VANGUARD
I can’t sleep.
It’s been hours since I left Mia locked in the guest bedroom, and I’ve spent every single one of them pacing my penthouse like a caged animal, trying to ignore the fact that she’s there, her presence haunting me like Poe’sTell-Tale Heart.
I sigh and press my head against the cool glass, watching as Manhattan churns on under dark skies, oblivious to my unraveling.
Mine.
The thought surfaces, all primal and absolute. I shove it down.
The thing is, the painful, ironic thing is, she’s not mine. She wasnevermine. I was a mission, an assignment, and she was a carefully constructed lie designed to get inside my head and my bed and extract everything useful before discarding the rest. She used me, just like everyone else does. She’s just the first person to fool me so entirely.
But she’s here now. In your space. Under your control. Right now, she is yours.
I push off the window and stop at the wet bar, pour three fingers of whiskey, and drain it in one swallow. The burn doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
Eliminate the threat.
The voice whispers from somewhere deep in my skull, that cold, mechanical part of me that sounds like my own thoughts but isn’t quite. It’s been louder since the warehouse.
She’s compromised you. She knows too much. End it.
My hand tightens on the glass until it cracks.
No.
I set the broken glass down carefully, watching blood well from the cuts on my palm. The wounds slowly begin to heal before my eyes, but for a moment, I feel pain. Actual physical pain that I so rarely feel.
