Page 34

Story: Violent Little Thing

The folder Victor promised me is in the center and seemingly untouched as she rifles through everything else.

Titus rests under the guest chair, his droopy eyes pinned on her.

“This isn’t upstairs.”

Delilah can’t mask her sharp gasp.

Enticed by the way she flinches away from my desk like it’s on fire, I close the distance between us and close in on her.

“Why are you in my office, Ms. Rose?”

Her throat moves in an anxious swallow. “I was coming to say good night to Titus.”

An inch away from her now, I knot my fingers in the hair at her nape and tug until her wild eyes are on me and only me.

“Ow,” she whimpers, the usual fight in her missing in action.

“I don’t like liars, Ms. Rose, and that’s the third one you’ve told me tonight.”

Seconds tick by until she clears her throat. “I wanted to know what you do for a living.”

A wince rearranges her appearance when my fingers tighten around her strands. The electricity between us zaps through me, short circuiting my brain. But I don’t break our point of connection. I can’t. I like invading her space too much.

“So, ask.”

“What?”

“Ask me what I do for a living, Delilah.”

Warm brown orbs jump over my face, lighting my cells on fire. I don’t know how I have any energy left after everything that happened today, but I do. And it pulses through me with enough momentum to make my heart beat double time.

“Go ahead, menace. I’m waiting.”

“What do you do for a living?” she whispers.

“Private aviation.”

Disbelief.

A frown.

More skepticism than she can contain behind those lips. “What else?”

“How do you know there’s something else?”

“There has to be. Why can you kidnap me without consequences?”

I scoff. Right now, the consequence is staring me in the eye.

Caging those words and a string of others I want to say to her, I free my hand from her silky strands and shove her toward the door.

I need her out of my space. Out from under my skin. I can’t breathe when she’s this close. Can’t think.

It’s maddening.

Infuriating.

Intoxicating.