“Don’t hurt me.” The plea slips out.
If anything, his eyes turn colder. “Where’s your phone?”
My last lifeline to 9-1-1 and the outside world? “I-I don’t have it.”
Mouth pressing into a grim line, Ridge yanks the strap of my purse off my shoulders, rifles through my bag, finds the device, and powers it down before pocketing it. “I’m sorry.”
Terror grips my throat. “What are you going to do to me?”
He doesn’t answer, which only terrifies me more. Then the elevator dings.
Eighth floor.
The doors open to a shadowy, dank hallway. It’s outdated. It smells musty.
I grab on to the safety rail in the elevator for dear life. I’m not letting go until Ridge gives me some answers. “Why are you bringing me here?”
He lifts me again, bracing me against his chest and carrying me away from my last line of escape without remorse. “So we can…talk.”
The way he says it? I don’t think that’s all we’ll be doing.
A team of maintenance men work on doorknobs up and down the hall. A few others pour into open hotel rooms with drawn drapes, hastily made beds, and…are they stringing up surveillance equipment?
Ridge finds an older guy wearing a hard hat with a belly that says he likes beer. “Are you finishing all these tonight?”
He nods. “Boss’s orders.”
Cursing, Ridge regards the maintenance worker. “Are any rooms complete yet?”
“Most of them. We’ll be finished in ten minutes. Audio will have to wait until morning, due to parts. But video is done along this hallway.” The older guy gestures from here to the grimy window.
Ridge doesn’t look pleased. “Active?”
Does he want to know if the rooms are already under video surveillance?
“If they’re not yet, they will be soon. Boss was in a hurry. Why? Got plans?” He flicks his gaze over to me, stare roaming my body with a dirty smile that makes me want a shower.
Ridge doesn’t answer. “I’ll be in the last door on the right. Tell your guys not to disturb me.”
The maintenance worker gives him a two-fingered salute. “You got it. Have fun.”
Without another word, Ridge forges full steam ahead into the room in question. Outside the door, he flicks the lock open.
Why does it lock from the hallway?
Then the door slams shut. He carries me to the center of the room, at the foot of a king-size bed, and sets me on my feet. “Why are you here?”
“Why should I answer you?”
Those black eyes sharpen. “You better listen to me, Little Red.”
I gasp. That’s what he called me when we met on New Year’s Eve, the night he spent in my hotel room with my body under his, giving me hours of the kind of pleasure that made me sure every other person staying on our floor heard me, too.
Here we are again. A different hotel room and a different situation—one way more terrifying, but…
“You remember?” It’s the wrong question to ask. It’s definitely the wrong time to ask it. But him using that nickname fills me with hope. It’s stupid. But it makes me feel better.
“You’re fucking right, I do,” he growls in my ear. “And now you’re in the middle of this shit, where I’d never want you.”
“Then why are you here?”
He sighs. “Long-ass story. But you better follow my lead—to the letter—if you want to live.”
Ridge
Predictably, Kristi’s eyes widen with horror. Her pale skin goes even paler. “W-would you really kill me?”
What a damn clusterfuck this night has turned into. I need to tell her. Everything. After I walked away from her at the start of the New Year without explanation, I didn’t dare look back. Of course she doesn’t trust me anymore. I don’t blame her. If nothing else, she must be confused. The me she sees now isn’t the me she met when my brother married her best friend. Coming clean is the only chance I have of getting her to trust me enough to follow my lead.
That’s the only way we both get out of here alive.
“No.”
But now comes the tough part. We’re being watched, and I have to make this look good.
I hope like fuck Kristi forgives me someday…but I’m prepared for the fact she may not.
Wrapping my fist in her long red tresses—the hair I still dream of wrapping around my fingers while I fuck her hoarse—I shove her back to the bed. She lands with a startled oomph. I follow her down, covering her body with mine, spreading her legs with my knees and making myself at home.
She’s not in the sparkling red dress she wore the night we met. She’s also not wearing sky-high heels, spangly bracelets, that spicy-floral perfume that drove me mad, the makeup that accentuated her blue eyes, or the soft curls that swished around her shoulders. Tonight, she’s in jeans, tennis shoes, and a khaki long-sleeved T-shirt. She’s not wearing any jewelry and almost no makeup. Her hair hangs free in gentle waves. And instead of flirtatious, she looks terrified.