Just stops. Like a door slamming.
I stare at him, breathing hard, mouth tingling, anger and arousal colliding so violently I can’t sort one from the other.
He keeps his hand in my hair for one more beat, eyes on mine, expression carved from something dark and deliberate. Then he lets go, opening his fist one finger at a time before he moves it from my head.
“You should really think about leaving, firefly.”
The words don’t register at first because my body is still trying to recover from the kiss.
I blink. “Wha…? You want me to—” I draw myself up and stop, refusing to finish the sentence. Fuck that.
Fuck him.
His jaw flexes. For one second—one—I think I see something crack through the control. Not softness. Something almost like frustration, if I wanted to take the time to dissect it.
“Before it’s too late.”
He moves around me and reaches the door before I can decide whether to throw something at him or demand he finish the sentence.
“Too late for what?” I snap.
He pauses with his hand on the handle but doesn’t turn. That’s the worst part.
If he looked at me, I might know what this is.
Whether he’s trying to scare me off because I’m an inconvenience, or he’s trying to save me becausesomething bigger and badder than him just walked through the door.
Instead, he says nothing. He opens the door.
The noise of the bar pours back in—music, laughter, glassware, voices, life continuing like my heartbeat isn’t trying to split my ribs wide open.
Then he’s gone.
I stand there in the stockroom, breathless and furious and humiliated by how badly I want to chase him and demand the truth.
Was I just fired?
Warned?
Or just…rejected.
I can’t let him do that, though. He knows—obviously—more than he’s telling me. Things about Nash. About downstairs. About what happens when the hidden parts of Noir push up into the light.
And whether he’s protecting me or controlling me or pushing me away, the result is the same.
The game just changed.
And I’m no longer sure I’m the one deciding my next moves.
Okay. Then what am I, if you know me so well?
—Reva
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REVA
For one wild,humiliating minute after Ever left me in the stockroom, I stood there trying to decide what had just happened.
