Page 56 of Hunted

Pearce snorted, spinning on his toes just as the doors dinged open again, giving me my first glimpse of the fourth floor—and that admittedly fine boulder—where he resided while on campus.

“Donkey, actually,” he corrected.

Flummoxed, I shoved past before he could hold the doors for a third time, muttering, “I don’t need you to hold doors open for me, Donkey.”

“Ignoring that horrendous nickname, of course you don’t, but my mother raised me to do so anyway.”

Wait—somebody around here actually had a functional mother? That was unexpected.

He stopped at the door marked 402, the only one on the right side of the hall, and reached up to pull a key down from the top of the frame. As he stretched, the hem of his shirt shifted, exposing a sliver of tanned skin.

I must have made some small noise, because his face snapped round to mine. He chuckled darkly, taking longer than strictly necessary to locate said key.

“Real original,” I said, more breathless than intended.

“My mother raised a gentleman, not a genius.” His perfect teeth flashed again before he turned to insert the key into the lock far more erotically than⁠—

Stop thinking about insertion, Addie!

“Are you coming?” he asked, voice deliciously—and irritatingly—low. “In, I mean.”

“Nope. I think I’ll wait out here, thank you very much.”

His hand whipped out to grasp mine and drag me inside faster than I could react.

“Better to wait in here than out in the hallway where anyone could see you. Don’t want someone reporting you for pining outside our doorway.”

His wink could have sold a deal to the devil.

“Our?”

“Our.” He grinned again. “Beck, Van, and I share an apartment while on campus.” He paused to consider his words for a moment. “Actually, pretty much everywhere we go, we bunk together.”

For fuck’s sake, stop thinking about the three of them sharing a bed, Adelaide.

Still holding my hand, Pearce led the way through a distinctly masculine apartment. It was comfortably furnished with a black leather couch and a cosy armchair in the living area to the right, and absolutely no splashes of colour or knick-knacks to speak of. A rectangular mahogany table doubling as a desk was placed to the left of the entryway, with four mismatched wooden chairs beneath it, at odds with the table’s inherent grandeur. Finally, the kitchen at the rear of the room was clinical, pristine, and white, housing a professional-level assortment of cookware.

Either they employed a personal chef—or at least one of the three liked to cook.

“This way,” he murmured, leading me through the open living space to a nondescript door off the left side of the kitchen. “This one’s mine.”

Unsurprisingly, he held it open for me—but I was stuck frozen on the threshold, unsure if I was willing to cross over into enemy territory so soon.

“Suit yourself.” He laughed, and waltzed in to retrieve a long, black, rectangular case from beneath the bed.

“Is that an Intervention?!” I asked, completely awed by the rifle’s magnificence when he flicked open the case lid. I moved before I was even consciously aware of it, my hand hovering over the sleek midnight outline of the gun—the very same model Pearce had mentioned all of one time and I’d latched onto, sliding into hyperfixation, ever since. I even went so far as to ask the armoury staff to show me what one looks like, since we weren’t allowed access to the internet—and by extension, the outside world—and to ask if they had any on site that I could try out.

They did not.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, beaming.

Smiles came easily to Deklan Pearce, it seemed. He must not be as traumatised as the rest of us.

Or perhaps he was more traumatised than any of us.

“Do you wanna test it out?”

“Do I…” I breathed, checking every inch of his emo-band-lead-singer, tragically handsome face for any hint of deception. When I found none, I allowed myself to linger in the huge chunk of joy he was inviting me into—in the form of cold steel and hot bullets.