Page 20 of Hidden

It’s my event crasher. How the hell did he get in here?

“Callie.” I wiggle to peer in the security room. “Callie!” I scream.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Shush.” He jiggles me and drags me into the room then shuts the door. Everything goes black. “Calm down,” he whispers against my throat. He’s calm and his stupid calm voice instantly works on me.

My body calms. Not because he told me to, telling me to do anything has never once worked, but because if I’m calm and he’s not, then I’m the one in control of the room. I’ll be calm to spite him. I’ll be calm to win.

Then, I decide, I’m going to break this man.

“There. See.” He’s going for soothing. He gets about halfway there. The last word comes out thinner than he wants it to.

I break his hold and punch.

I have no idea what I’m punching. It’s pitch black.

But the crunch is satisfying as fuck.

Then I flip on the lights that I know are exactly one inch from the right of the door about five feet up.

Light floods the room. Soft light because Callie hates fluorescent lights.

Viagra is holding his shoulder.

“Aimed for the nose,” I tell him scanning the room. “Shoulder works.”

He bends over breathing hard.

“Where is she?” I turn over chairs. Rush to the locker room, the door swinging shut behind me. The lights to the right where it always is. I slap them on. Three rows of lockers and not one of them is her. “Callie!” Nothing. “Showers.”

I flip every curtain back.

“Where is she?” Okay this is real panic. I hate real panic. I don’t know how to metabolize real panic.

“Hadley,” the man says.

I rush back through the locker room to come face to face with the man I have officially deemed my nemesis.

“Where is she?” Heat cracks open behind my ribs. My pulse hits places it shouldn’t. Fingertips, jaw, behind my eyes.

And my voice.

It sounds odd. Deeper, sexier, like I smoked a pack a day and only got hotter instead of well, diseased.

The man swallows and holds up his hands. He sees something in me. I don’t know what it is. But fear has a scent now. Lust does too.

Gods, they’re both delicious. Why does his sweat smell like the most delicious musk that ever musked?

And then somehow, I’m in front of him. Those chocolate-brown eyes gone, disappeared under dilated pupils.

“She’s okay,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a wild animal. I mean I’ve never been considered a wild animal in my life. But I like the power. “Here, see.” He moves his hands and I…

I’m fucking growling.

Too late to figure it out now.

I snatch his phone. And see Callie sleeping in her bed. Her arm across her eyes and one leg hanging off the foot of her bed. She isn’t supposed to be home asleep. She should be here, working. Until seven. She took a double for me, to be here tonight, with me.

“We made sure to take her home.” He laughs like something in that is funny. It isn’t. “Well, I did.”