Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Forty-Four

Juniper

M y cell phone rang as I was sitting in the dark at Reena’s.

I knew it was him before I looked at the screen because no one called me. At least not since Reena disappeared into the ether.

I glanced down.

Shivering just seeing the name I’d programmed for him, I swiped to answer as nerves stuck like peanut butter in my throat while my heart slammed against my ribs as if I were running. And I never ran. “This is new.”

“You’re out?”

His deep voice turned my shiver into a full-body tingle of something I didn’t want to think about, and my defense mechanism of choice—smarmy sarcasm—took center stage. “Since when did we graduate to calling instead of returning texts?” I was awkward on the phone.

I was awkward, period.

And this man only made me more so because his deep, hard-edged and sex-rough voice that sounded like he’d kill you before he’d fuck you messed with my head. It also sounded so much like another rough voice that I refused to even think about it because there was no way he was the SEAL from two years ago.

He couldn’t be.

“Since now,” he asserted.

“I must’ve missed the notification.” Could you fall in love with a voice? “Does this mean I can now call you whenever I want?” I caught myself. “Actually, never mind. Don’t answer that. In fact, do not give me that kind of leeway, Mr. Man of Mystery. I meant what I said. I’m out. As in finished with this—whatever this is.”

“You done?”

I melted further into my puddle of angst over the amount of time I let this hot stranger live rent free in my head. And I didn’t even know if he was hot. But any man who had a voice that sounded like his was either trouble with a side of fuck-my-life-up, or he had fifty other women calling him just to hear his dominant sex voice. Not that I needed to be thinking about him and sex. The dominant part, I couldn’t help. He’d started it. Him and his texts.

And now I wanted to know what the rushing noise in the background on his end of the call was.

“No. I mean, yes. I’m done.” I needed to be done. I was already way too attached, and that alone was reason enough to end this.

That, and the fact that I didn’t have control over this cell account.

Not that I’d be able to afford another phone for a while, but I’d been without a cell before. I could do it again. I just needed to quit stalling. And freaking out. And not lose it over letting go of this guy’s texts. Or his voice.

Everything was temporary anyway.

But before I blew up my life even more, or again, what little life I had, I just wanted to know…

“What’s that sound?” Since the moment I’d heard his voice, I’d analyzed every single sound on every single call. Like analyzed , analyzed. Emphasis on the anal. “Are you running?”

“Woman, if I’m running, it’s for one of two reasons. The second you’ll never fucking know about, and the first I handle six days a week at oh five hundred.”

Oh God. “Shoot me now.” I sounded pathetic, even to me. “And don’t call me ‘woman.’” Damn it, I hadn’t meant to say that last part. “Hanging up now. Enjoy your rushing-wind background noise and your I’m-a-runner-and-in-great-hot-man-shape self, and have a nice life.” Making the first smart decision I’d made in two years, I hung up.

But it felt shitty.

Like, all of a sudden, panic beyond reason, lose my breath, start to shake shitty .

So fucking shitty that I couldn’t bring myself to power down the phone.

The thought alone made me start to hyperventilate, and tears welled, but before the first fell, before I could curl up on the hard futon couch of a house I’d technically broken into, the screen lit up.

Sitting in the cool AC with the curtains pulled shut, I stared down at my lifeline.

It was the only light in the dark living room.

That probably should’ve been a bad omen. Or a metaphor for the absolute shit existence of thinly veiled fear I lived in no matter how much I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t come up with a proper analogy to assign to it in that moment.

I was too busy staring at the new contact name I’d programmed.

Blade scrolled one more time across the screen, then the call went to voicemail.

Two seconds later, a text came through.

Blade: One, don’t hang up on me.

Blade: Two, calling back.

Blade: Three, answer.