REID
PLAYLIST: LIONS INSIDE – VALLEY OF WOLVES
Ilean against the door and stare at my apartment. It feels dirty, filthy, invaded.
She has been in here. I know it. That’s how she knows so much about me.
I am fuming inside, fired by the desire to burn down the entire apartment. Which I won’t do, of course, but I’d love to.
“Gods, this woman!” I shout. I despise her because of all the workload I have, my apartment is my place of peace. And now, I have to uproot everything.
I drop my leather jacket to the floor and get to work.
For the entire night, I searched and checked every last inch of my apartment. I check for any transmissions, like from microphones, cameras, or whatever else she might have placed in here.
But I find nothing.
It is my job to find what people try to hide. But there is simply nothing. And I am good at my job.
I groan as I sit on the floor in the middle of my living room, as my phone alarm beeps.
I jump up, stare at it as I get the notice that Avery moved out of her five-mile radius.
I am frozen.
She’s doing it.
I didn’t believe she’d do it that fast.
I glance at my watch. It’s three in the morning.
“You little fucker,” I tell her.
I get a call from the supervisor who tells me she’s on the move.
“I know,” I say. “Already saw it. I’m on it.”
We hang up, and I dial her number.
It rings.
“Yes,” she answers in a whisper.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I curse at her. “You’re out of your radius.”
“I know,” she says. “But you told me to look into the Fullerton case, and I am just doing what you told me—“
I remove the phone from my ear, put her on speaker, and stare at the map.
She’s in a building at the corner of 5th and 94th.
I groan as I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes.
She did not.
“You didn’t,” I say.
“You told me to look into it,” she says, whispering.
“I meant the files!” I shout as I let go of my nose and open my eyes. “Not to break into his house!”
“You should be clearer in your orders, then.”
I breathe out heavily, and then I explode.
“You know very well what I meant! You simply try to conceal your desire to steal behind it. What is it he has that you want, huh? I know you’re going after something, and this way no one can charge you for it.”
“Gotten anywhere with the search of your apartment yet?” she asks me. How dare she?
HOW DARE SHE!?
I am going to have her head for this.
I press the red button with force as I hang up, grab my jacket, and run down the stairs to my car.
There, I hit the switch on the Suburban’s dash for the grille lights and race all the way back to Manhattan with the red and blue light strobing through the darkness of the night.
When I bring the car to a halt in front of the house with screeching tires, she leans casually at a street light, apparently waiting for me. The warm light falls onto her as she stands there completely undisturbed.
I get out of the car.
“That was fast,” she says casually, glancing at her watch.
“You!” I shout as I walk up to her.
She smirks.
“You what?”
“You are arrested for breaking the deal,” I say darkly. “Turn around and hands on your back.”
“But what for?” she asks like an angel. She is playing me, and I can’t wait to get her in front of a judge.
“You moved out of your radius,” I say coldly.
“Technically, I didn’t,” she says playfully. It states a five-mile radius. This here is exactly five miles and three-tenths. Everything up to nine-tenths is technically still five miles. And I am willing to argue that in court with the best lawyers there are.”
“You know that’s not true. It is set to a perimeter, and that’s fixed.”
“Then the perimeter was set wrong,” she says. “Also, you told me to look into him. The deal clearly states in clause 15.2 that I am allowed to leave the radius when I am either with you or do so on your orders.”
I hate her.
She is making me aggressive on a level I have yet to know.
“You broke into a house!”
“Prove it,” she says and pushes herself off the street light and closes the gap between us. “Come on, try it. Give it your best shot. But you very well know the GPS isn’t completely accurate, and it will never hold in court.”
She is so close to me now.
“Come on,” she says, her warm breath caressing my skin as she holds up her wrists. “Do it. Arrest me.”
She is playing me.
And I am rendered speechless.
The way she looks at me with her intense dark brown eyes.
The way her eyes shimmer in the light that falls into them.
The way she smells.
The way she looks.
The way she provokes me.
My chest heaves up and down as my body reacts to her in ways it shouldn’t.
It’s against the rules.
I hate her.
I despise her.
She is a con artist.
A thief.
A liar.
“Do it,” she breathes out, a knowing smirk on her face. A smirk I want to hit out of her face.
“Life is not about doing everything right. It’s about failing so much so fast that you know exactly who you are and what you can do. That’s where life begins.” Her words are the last thing I can think of before I do something I will regret for the rest of my life.
I grab her face on both sides.
Push her back into the street light.
And kiss her.
Her lips are so unbelievably soft, a taste of vanilla on them, and I consume them.
A soft moan escapes me.
Desire purrs through me.
A desire I have never felt before.
I need to feel her—
More of her—
It is a sensation that consumes my senses.
Hijacks my sanity.
And eats away everything I stand for.
This cannot be.
Fuck.
What am I doing here?
I stop the kiss.
Hold my breath.
Stare at her.
Take a step back.
My hands shoot in front of me to keep her away.
Fuck.
Horror surges through me as I realize what I have done.
I have broken the most important rule.
She made me—
She pushes herself off the street light.
Walks against my hands.
“You played me,” I whisper in a shaky voice.
“Are you telling me I made you do something you didn’t want to do?” she asks and brushes back a strand of my hair, turns, and walks away with a long shadow following her from the next street light, leaving me standing here in a whirlwind of the mess I created.