Page 166 of Problematic

“Lock the door,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“No one enters or exits.”

A tiny sound came from the bed. “I’m right here.”

“I know.”

“I have rights.”

“If she gets hurt,” I said, voice dropping, “I will be creative.”

Vale’s expression didn’t change. “Understood.”

Vale stepped aside as I crossed into the hall, nightmares spilling after me, weapons snug against my body, her scent still on my skin, and her voice still lodged somewhere under my ribs.

Behind me, the door closed. The lock clicked. I kept walking. If I stopped, I’d go back.

If I went back, Lux Draven could burn with his tower, his enemies, his secrets, and every blood-soaked responsibility waiting outside that room.

The worst part wasn’t that I wanted it all to burn.

The worst part was how close I’d come to actually letting it just to stay with her a little while longer.

Chapter 24

Liv

The door clicked, and suddenly I was absolutely alone in a stranger’s home. A stranger I had messed around with. Multiple times. Unapologetically.

I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know his face. I didn’t know why Vale had said Lux needed him like it was a private joke while I had my thighs out, panties off, and dignity somewhere out the fucking window.

I was doing a terrible job at being a responsible adult. Truly. If responsible adulthood had a certification program, mine had been revoked, shredded, burned, and fed to him for dinner. I came here for answers and got distracted by amazing sex.

But damn.

He was good.

I dropped backward onto the bed and covered my face with both hands. No. Absolutely not. I was not lying in a masked criminal’s bed, in his shirt, replaying what he had done to me.

He had tried to say something right before running out the door. Trying should not have been hot. Trying should have been the bare minimum. Where the fuck were my standards? Right, stuck on skin-tight tactical gear over an ass wrapped in leather straps. Ugh.

I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in a pillow. It smelled like him. Of course it did. Leather. Smoke. Something dark and clean underneath. Expensive, because, apparently, the masked assassin had lots of money, good pillows, and hands that made me forget feminism, criminal law, and my own name.

I groaned into the pillow. “If I keep getting sex like that, I may never come to my senses.”

I lifted my head and stared toward the closed bedroom door. He’d told me to make myself at home. Technically, he said I could do anything I liked in his tower.

His tower.

Then he’d panicked and corrected it.

I sat up slowly. No. No, no, no, that was weird. Right? Yes. Totally weird. Vale had said Lux needed him. He had reacted like Vale had stabbed him with the name. Then he told me this was his tower, backpedaled, and gave me the kind of answer men gave when they wanted you too distracted by tactical pants to ask questions . . . and it had worked. Stupid smutty brain.

I touched the place beneath my jaw that was still tingling. The skin felt normal. My body did not. Something had happened when I came. My eyes had changed. I knew because I’d felt it, a flash of heat behind them, strange and bright and mine in a way nothing had ever felt mine. He had noticed too. Of course he had. The masked nightmare noticed everything except how suspicious he sounded when someone called him Lux to his face.

Mask—whatever . . .