A laugh escapes before I can choke it. It sounds wrong in my throat. “I recall you taking most of the space.”
He hums, then turns to face me, arms crossed but loose. He studies my face for a beat, like he’s memorizing details.
“Anyway… what’s the plan for today. Do I get to go home?”
A scoff escapes me. “No, Landon. You don’t. I don’t think you quite understand what’s at stake here. You will be attached to me, probably for the rest of your days. Which is hopefully more than one, if you can follow instructions as well as you break them.”
He blinks, then gives me a crooked smile. He doesn’t seem surprised. If anything, he relaxes, like the only thing worse than being trapped here is being ignorant of it. “So, is this where you put me in a cage, or just keep me busy enough to forget I’m locked up?”
He says it like a challenge, but he’s testing the cage he’s in, not rattling it. I can see the calculation behind his eyes—the way he tries on the idea of being kept, and finds it doesn’t fit as badly as he wants to pretend.
I take another sip of coffee, letting it scald my throat. “Neither. We are going to my house at some point today. Once there, you’ll have run of the place. Within reason. There are rooms you don’t enter, floors you don’t step on, and if you break the rules, you deal with me.”
He considers, then asks, “Which floors?”
I set my mug down, leaning hipshot against the counter. “Basement. Sub-level. My office.” I tick them off on my hand, a short list for a 5000 square foot house sitting on an acre lot. “The rest is yours, so long as you’re smart.”
He nods. “Okay.” Then, after a pause: “Is this where you threaten to kill me if I misbehave?”
I grin—can’t help it. “No.” I step closer, enjoy the way he stands his ground, the way his chin tips up to meet me. “But I will punish you. I can be very creative.”
He blushes, and I want to see what he’ll do with that information.
He tries for bravado. “I’m not sure if that’s a threat or a promise.”
My chest rumbles and I smile into the rim of my mug. “You’re smarter than most, Landon. You’ve already figured out what I am. What I need to do. If you’re scared, you should be. If you’re not, you’re fucking insane.”
That settles between us. He takes another sip, then puts his mug down. The nerves are still there, shallow under the surface, but now they look like anticipation.
“Is there anything you want to tell me before we go?” I ask, just to see what he’ll say.
He shakes his head, hair flopping back into his face. “Nope. I just want to shower again. Your water pressure is to die for. And maybe eat, because I feel like I’m about to be led to my execution.”
“I’ll feed you before I kill you,” I deadpan, and he actually snorts.
“Wow, that’s charming.”
“You’ll get used to it.” I move past him, hand brushing his waist in a calculated not-quite-touch. “Go shower. I’ll make breakfast, then we pack. I’d like to hit the road before the rivals wake up.”
He turns, mouth half-open. “Rivals?”
“House politics,” I say, already halfway out of the room. He still won’t understand what the fuck that means, but I don’t trust him enough to expand.
He’s still watching me, even as I head towards the kitchen. I feel his eyes on my back. For reasons I don’t care to name, it makes my heartbeat go uneven.
Chapter Seven: Landon
TheshowerinBriar’spenthouse is twice the size of my old dorm room. Glass on three sides, the city a million blinking eyes beyond, like a surveillance state just waiting for me to slip. I wash fast, using the expensive soap—his, I assume, because it smells faintly like cedar—and towel off with linen that probably costs more than my monthly rent.
I have no clothes. Correction: my only clothes are the ones I came in with, ruined by sweat and semen and the desperate grip of last night’s hands. I find a stack of black t-shirts folded military-neat in the walk-in closet, and pick the smallest one. It still hangs off me like I’m a kid who stole his dad’s uniform. I find a pair of track pants that hang loose on my hips. I cinch them tight, roll the cuffs, and stand in the doorway, every inch the imposter.
The apartment is quiet, but not the kind of quiet that means empty. It’s that loaded silence, the one that follows a scream or a gunshot. I follow the smell of food down the hall, drawn by the most ordinary of lures.
It’s wild to think just yesterday I was downstairs in a massive ballroom, and today I wake up in a house inside a house.
My life is a dream.
Briar is at the stove, spatula in one hand, phone in the other. He’s making eggs. Bacon sizzles beside him, fat spitting onto the induction glass, the smell making my stomach growl. For a second, I can almost believe he’s just a man, not the thing that fucked me open and erased my old life with a few words.
