Page 70 of Behind the Scenes

Nothing.

Not so much as a sound from beyond.

I knocked again. This time, there was a shuffle just before the door opened to show a smiling Laura.

“Took you long enough,” she said and opened the door for me to come in.

My eyes trailed her form in the hallway light. She was wearing one of her standard work outfits, though this time with velvet pink pumps on her feet. Shoes I’d never seen her wear before.

The room itself was pitch black, but just beyond her I could see a figure in the darkness.

Is that Lenard?

I entered the dark room. The sound of Laura closing the door softly behind me and locking me in was louder than my own breathing.

Something was off. And Laura was eerily calm.

“Are you playing with me?” I asked, giving her a look. The anger about her coming here to meet Lenard was still boiling under my skin, but curiosity was currently fighting for first place.

“Playing?” she asked with a small laugh as she came closer. Her hand reached up to caress my cheek, and that small gesture had my skin heating. “Not at all. You could call this… a test. Maybe even a present?”

What?

She walked in front of me now, farther into the room, her heels clicking against the hard flooring. Then she clicked on the light.

There was a man tied to a chair in the middle of the room. He was knocked out and already bleeding from the head, but the rhythmic movement of his chest told me he was still alive. The area all around the chair was completely covered in plastic.

It wasn’t Lenard. Not even close.

Julian.

“I said we needed a plan, didn’t I?” she asked and reached to pick up something to the side. A knife.

But instead of pointing it at him, she held it out for me to take.

Bloodlust shot through me so powerfully it rooted me to the floor. The image of me stalking over there and digging the knife into his belly over and over again was clouding everything else.

Including the way Laura looked at me in the dim lighting.

I had told her more than I ever told anyone, and she’d listened. My parents, the whole sick story of what made me who I am. Or maybe I’d always been this way.

I thought she understood in Hawaii, but now I was sure she did.

She saw me. The real me.

She wasn’t afraid or disgusted.

She wasexcited.

A test, she said.

“I propose we make some changes to our contract,” I said as I stalked toward her. But instead of grabbing the knife right away, I pulled her to me, fisting my hand in her hair.

She held the knife to my neck, a move that had an ache running through me. I had never needed her more than in that very second.

“Will you do this for me, my love?” she whispered, her hand steadily holding the knife to my throat as her tongue came out to run across my lips. “If you do this, I can guarantee you will never have to fight that urge of yours again. I’ll be your supplier. And your keeper.”

Fuck. Her words were swirling intoxicatingly around my head. The heat of her body was sinking into mine.