A minute later, I hear the door shut. Alone and free to make an ugly noise, I do a full body stretch that I can feel in every inch of muscle I’ve got.Dios,I’m sore. Like, in a “smiling through every wince” kind of way. Last night was the best night of my life. No one has ever been so interested in or attentive to my pleasure. He built me a vibrator, for fuck’s sake! And it’s so much more than the perfect gift or his hot, dirty mouth, or the way he treated learning what I liked as if he were a scientist collecting data from trial and error.
Show me how to touch you, love.
Like this?
Yes. Fuck yes. That’s it. Come for me.
He’s… everything. Everything I hoped he’d be. Everything I could want. Our online chemistry was good, but our in-person chemistry is off the fucking charts.
But as I take a quick shower and dress myself, I sit with a strange feeling in my chest. It’s a fizzy happiness, sure, because Wesley is literally amazing, but why am I notjusthappy? Why is there this lingeringsense of… dread?
Maybe it’s because if the potential with Peter was exciting and terrifying, it’s 100x worse with Wesley. My heart is already involved. It has been for two years.
And I’m not used to being vulnerable. I’m used to being badass hacker Madison, who makes terrible men cry and doesn’t need anyone. It’s simple. Safe. No one can hurt you when you don’t give a shit about what they think.
But I give a lot of shits about what Wesley thinks. And it’s really fucking scary because that gives him so much power over me—so much power to hurt me.
That’s future-Madison’s problem. Present-Madison’s problem is… packing—and the fact that I’ve only got one suitcase, and it’s still in my car from yesterday morning. I packed light in anticipation of being on the run, and since that doesn’t matter anymore, I’d like to fill the rest of the space with important stuff. The entire contents of my toy drawer, for example.
Just before I head out I remember to grab my pistol from its drawer and roll my eyes as I tuck it in the waistband of my skirt. “Load your gun, Madison,” I mock in my best British accent.
Wesley’s bike is still parked next to my car, so I assume that means he took that van he pointed out on the street out front. It made me snicker last night as I considered and discarded about a dozen inappropriate jokes. But I can’t ignore how ironically polar opposite the two sides of his persona are—on the one hand you’ve got a panty-dropping motorcycle and on the other you’ve got a pedo van.
As I open the back door of my car, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Grabbing it, I check the screen and see a text. Of course, he put himself in my contacts.
First chance I get, I’m changing his contact from “Sir” to “Sir Nerd.”
Sir
It’s not safe, Madison.
Get back in your flat until I return.
I haven’t rolled my eyes this hard since I was a kid, and I distinctly remember being told they’d get stuck that way. I start tapping out my response.
I’m not a total idiot. I’ve got my gun.
But just before I can press send, someone grabs me from behind.
23
Wesley
When the game is life and death, you might as well stack the odds.
Madison left her flat.
Muttering a curse under my breath, I call up the tracking app on my phone. Her car is still in the lot behind the building, which eases my worry somewhat, but I don’t like that she left. I don’t like the panic that threatened to swallow me whole when I realized I didn’t have eyes on her. And now she isn’t answering my texts.
The only real solution I can see is having her by my side at all times—otherwise I might go out of my mind with worry. I’ll wait with her while she packs, then we’ll go together to pack up my things and continue on to the safehouse.
Most people aren’t so blasé when you tell them there’s a price on their head. And while I don’t want her living in fear per se…somefear would be nice to see. Fear makes people careful, and I want her to act with caution.
I park my van in the spot it feels I literally just left—I didn’t even make it all the way to the hotel before getting the notification that she left her flat and turning around—and wander to the back. A narrow alley separates her building from its neighbor, and I know from practice exactly where the cameras are to avoid.
But when I get to the small car park in the rear, there’s no sign of Madison. I frown and double-check my phone—I didn’t see a notification from the cameras that she’d returned inside. And I don’t see her at her car. I see… Why is there a suitcase on the back seat? I reach for the door handle and find it unlocked—and my stomach sinks.
A high-pitched yelp sends ice through my blood. I whip around, trying to determine where the sound came from, and my feet start moving before I’ve fullyprocessed. The area back here is closed off by the surrounding buildings. There are a few security cameras, but it’s dark and much more private than the front street. Several alleys snake away from the lot, and I charge in the direction the sound came from.
