Page 22 of Prey

His eyes are intense. The same look he had in the bathroom. The same look that made my knees buckle.

"You're lying," he says. Yes. I'm lying. I'm always lying.

The mask is a lie, the politeness is a lie, the "good morning, sir" is a lie. The only truth is what I did in that bathroom. The only truth is that I'd do it again without a second thought.

"Why won't you just say something?" The words explode out of me.

He doesn't flinch.

"You've been acting like nothing happened. Like I'm just your secretary. Like I didn't prove anything."

The room goes silent. I can hear my own heartbeat. His breathing. The distant buzz of the city outside his window. I can’t believe I actually said it. He looks at me for a long moment but doesn't speak. Just stands there, gray eyes fixed on mine, reading everything I'm trying to hide. Then he smiles.

"There you are," he says quietly. "I've been waiting for this, the moment you stopped pretending."

I'm not pretending. I'm terrified, I'm furious.

"You wanted me to say something," he says.

He steps closer. His chest is inches from mine. I can feel the heat of him. God. He's going to kill me.

"I watched you last night," he says. "Not just in the bathroom. The whole night. From the moment you walked into the club. I watched you drink. I watched you laugh with your friends. I watched you pretend you didn't see me."

I wasn't pretending.

I saw you.

I couldn't stop seeing you.

"I didn’t say anything this morning because I wanted to see what you’d do, if you’d break. And now you have." He reaches out, touches my face. The same way he did in the bathroom, gentle, possessive.

"You're not invisible, or harmless," he says "You're a mess, obsessed, and you're mine. My prey."

I don't think I can answer even if I wanted to, my lungs feels empty, and my heart is pounding so hard. I'm surprised he can't hear it.

"Go back to your desk," he says. "Finish the Thomas file. Send it to legal."

"And then?"

"You’ll go to my apartment, you’ll wait in my bed. You won’t touch yourself." He leans in. His mouth brushes my ear. "Then you're going to show me just how hopeless you really are."

Chapter 13

Rose

I see him before he sees me. I always see people first.

Grey is at the copier, feeding a stack of contracts through the machine with that same careful, invisible efficiency. An office furniture in human form. On the surface, that is. Underneath, he’s different. I watch people for a living, it’s my job, and I’m very good at my job. He’s not walking the way he walked three weeks ago. He’s tighter, coiled. Something happened with Cain.

I know the pattern. Cain doesn’t change easily, but when he does, the shift radiates. The office has been humming differently for days, a slightly off-key note under the usual corporate symphony. Email response times altered. Meeting schedules bent around one man's availability. Glances that linger too long on a particular desk.

Grey's desk.

The copier finishes its run. He gathers the pages, straightens them twice like he’s aligning his entire life in a neat stack.

Pathetic. I step forward.

"Grey."