With my magic sated and back under my control now, I meet her smile with a wicked one of my own, bringing a small bit of energy to my fingertip. Holding her gaze, I run a path between the valley of her breasts before cresting to one nipple, tweaking it while giving a small jolt. She gasps and jerks beneath me, but I grab her hip, holding her in place as she attempts to squirm away, giving her other breast the same treatment as she starts to pant and curse beneath me.
“You have work tomorrow, you should get some sleep.” She bites her bottom lip, and a trace of guilt trickles through our bond.
Scoffing, I use my thumb to coax her lip free, kissing away the sting as I send another spark through her. “What are they going to do, fire me? Now, let’s see what it will take to tire out that smart mouth of yours.”
Chapter 10
Kasen
––––––––
The pounding on thedoor is mirrored in my head and I groan, burrowing my face beneath the pillow. As it continues, louder and more insistent, I huff, shucking off my blanket and getting to my feet, the bed creaking beneath me.
If Beck lost his keys again, I’m going to kill him. It’s pissing money down the drain to keep replacing the damn lock.
Toeing the empty bottle of whiskey out of my path, I tug a pair of pajama pants on over my boxers, scratching my chest on the way down the hall. “I’m coming, already!”
My raging instincts have finally settled back to a semi-manageable level after an involuntary shift snuck up on me last night, taking the edge off. The last few days, the only way I’ve been able to get any sleep is after drowning out the horrifying images that have taken root over the last few days, finding a temporary solution in the bottom of a bottle. Still, it doesn’t help during the day, my mind feeling oily from picturing one scenario after the other to try and fill in all of the blanks of what Scarlett might have gone through, of the hopelessness of the entire situation. Every day that I show up at work, my head is upstairs, a restless energy taking over my personality that’s made it impossible to sit still and watch the screens in the security office all day, skin crawling and snapping over every little thing.
Yanking open the door, all traces of irritation disappear from my face, replaced by a cold splash of fear that wakes me up better than any coffee. Malcolm Drake stands in the doorway, completely out of place in the dingy hallway. “You’re not at the office.”
Brain running on autopilot, I instantly reply, “It’s my day off.”
“Good, get in the car. We need to talk,” he commands, stepping back like he expects me to follow him half naked.
I almost open my mouth to ask why we can't talk here until I hear the neighbor's kids' thundering footsteps rattling the ceiling despite it being nearly two in the morning. “Let me grab a shirt.”
He nods as I hastily jog back to my room to tug on a t-shirt and replace my pants for a pair of jeans, snagging my keys and wallet off of the end table and returning in two minutes flat. Malcolm is standing in the exact spot I left him, his expression unreadable. Though if he went through to track me down for a private conversation, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what it’s about.
Out on the street, his sleek black car is waiting, and I go to open his door for him out of habit before he waves me off and gestures to get in the passenger side. Before I’ve even fastened my seatbelt, he pulls away from the curb and merges into traffic. A few turns later, it’s clear we’re not heading to the office, bypassing it and merging onto the highway.
Maybe he didn't want to fire me in front of witnesses so he wasn’t a suspect in my murder. Now we’re off to a remote location in the middle of the night so he has somewhere convenient to dump my body.
The silence becomes torturous the longer time stretches on, but I can’t bring myself to be the one to break it. A little over an hour later and we’re outside of town, the ocean to the left, and a national park to the right, preserved from development so shifters have somewhere to burn off steam that doesn’t disrupt the city. Abruptly, he pulls over to the side of the road, turning his hazard lights on.
If he tells me to follow him into the woods, I might have to kill him. I could take Scarlett and run, figure things out somehow.
