Chapter 2 2

Karley woke to the smell of cedar and something else-steam, soap, the particular mineral scent of expensive water filtration systems. She was lying on something soft that wasn't her bed, covered by fabric that weighed more than her grandmother's quilt.

She opened her eyes.

The ceiling was twenty feet above her, coffered and painted with delicate frescoes she didn't recognize. For a disorienting moment, she thought the entire previous night had been a stress-induced nightmare. But then the scent of unfamiliar, high-thread-count sheets registered, and the memory of Kevon's cold smile in the car flooded back, churning in her stomach. This wasn't her apartment. This wasn't a dream. A chandelier hung in the center, crystal drops catching morning light that poured through floor-to-ceiling windows. She turned her head and saw Los Angeles spread below like a circuit board, the Hollywood sign visible in the hazy distance.

The Beverly Hills Hotel. The penthouse suite. She'd been here once before, six months ago, when Kevon had first brought her to meet his mother. She'd spilled wine on the carpet and spent twenty minutes in the bathroom trying not to cry.

She sat up too fast. The room tilted, and she grabbed the arm of the sofa to steady herself. Kevon's jacket slid from her shoulders into her lap. She was still wearing yesterday's dress, wrinkled and salt-stained, her feet bare.

The sound of running water came from somewhere to her left. She followed it with her eyes and saw the frosted glass door of the bathroom, light glowing behind it, a silhouette moving inside that was unmistakably male and unmistakably naked.

Her face flushed. She looked away, reaching for the water glass on the coffee table. Her throat felt packed with sand.

That's when she saw the phone.

It was Kevon's personal device, the one he never let out of his sight, lying face-up on the marble tabletop. The screen was lit, unlocked, displaying something that made her hand freeze halfway to the glass.

A map. Satellite view of the California coastline. And in the center, a red dot labeled with her initials.

KB. Pulsing steadily at an address she recognized-the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Karley leaned closer. Her heart began to pound in a rhythm she didn't like. She could see more now, details that didn't make sense until they suddenly, horribly did. A trail of red breadcrumbs leading north from downtown LA, hugging the coast, stopping at a blank stretch of highway where she'd pulled over.

The Pacific Coast Highway. The cliff. The moment she'd thought she was alone.

The water shut off.

Karley jerked back, knocking the water glass with her elbow. It didn't fall, but the sound of it rocking against the marble was loud as a gunshot in the sudden silence. The bathroom door handle turned.

She grabbed a throw pillow and clutched it to her chest, eyes fixed on the coffee table, on the phone, on the evidence of something she couldn't name yet but could already feel in her stomach like bad meat.

Kevon stepped out wearing nothing but a towel. Water dripped from his hair, down his neck, across the chest she'd traced with her fingers a hundred times. He was drying his hair with another towel, eyes finding her immediately, reading her face with the speed of a man who made his living understanding structural stress.

His gaze dropped to the coffee table. To the phone. To the screen that was still glowing with her location, her movements, her pathetic attempt at escape laid bare in digital red.

He didn't react. He walked to the table, picked up the phone, pressed the side button to darken the screen. The motion was casual, unhurried, the same way he might silence an alarm during breakfast.

"You're awake." He moved to the bar cart and selected a bottle. Ice clinked against crystal. "How do you feel?"

Karley watched him pour two fingers of bourbon into a glass. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them into the pillow.

"Kevon." Her voice came out rough, sleep-rough and fear-rough. "What was that? On your phone?"

The ice stopped moving. For a fraction of a second, the room held its breath. Then the bourbon splashed into the glass, and Kevon turned to face her.

He was smiling. That magazine smile, the one that had graced the cover of Architectural Digest last spring.

"You saw." It wasn't a question. He walked toward her, holding both glasses, and settled onto the sofa beside her. The cushions compressed, rolling her slightly toward him. "I wondered if you would."

He offered her the second glass. She didn't take it.

"The app," she said. "The map. The-" She couldn't say tracking. Couldn't say spy. Couldn't say the word that would make this real. "What is it?"

Kevon set the unwanted glass on the table. He turned to face her fully, one arm stretching along the back of the sofa behind her shoulders. His skin was still warm from the shower, radiating heat that she wanted to lean into and recoil from simultaneously.

"It's a security system." His voice was low, reasonable, the tone he used when explaining a design concept to a difficult client. "I had it installed in your car's computer six months ago. After that incident in the parking garage, remember? When the battery died and you were stranded?"

Karley remembered. It had been their third date. She'd called him crying, embarrassed, hating herself for needing rescue. He'd arrived in twenty minutes with jumper cables and a smile that made her feel like the heroine of a romantic comedy.

"You said you were worried," she whispered. "You said-"

"I was worried." His hand found hers, prying her fingers from the pillow, interlacing them with practiced ease. "I am worried. That car is a death trap, Karley. The electrical system, the brakes, the transmission-I've had my mechanic look at it. You know what he told me?"

She shook her head. She didn't know. She didn't want to know. She wanted to pull her hand away and demand he explain why he'd tracked her to the cliff, why he'd lied about soul mates, why he was looking at her with such perfect, terrifying patience.

"He told me it could fail catastrophically at any moment." Kevon squeezed her fingers. "So I installed the GPS. Not to spy on you. Never that." He laughed, a soft sound that vibrated in his chest. "To find you. If you needed me. If you were hurt, or lost, or-"

"Or running away from our wedding?"

The words hung between them. Karley hadn't meant to say them. They'd escaped like something alive, something desperate.

Kevon's expression shifted. The patience cracked, just slightly, and something darker showed through. His hand tightened on hers, not quite painful, but close.

"Is that what you were doing?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Running?"

"I don't know." She tried to pull away. He wouldn't let her. "I was scared. I am scared. This is all so fast, and you're so-" She gestured helplessly at the room, at him, at the life that felt like a costume she'd been sewn into. "You're Kevon Mcconnell. And I'm just-"

"Mine." He said it simply, as if stating a fact of architecture, gravity, weather. "You're mine, Karley. And I don't share. I don't lose what's mine."

He released her hand and cupped her face instead, thumbs pressing gently at her jaw, forcing her to meet his eyes. They were gray in this light, the color of the ocean before a storm.

"Do you know what I felt when I realized you were gone?" His thumbs traced her cheekbones. "When I checked the app and saw you driving north, away from me, away from everything we've built?"

She shook her head, trapped in his grip, in his gaze.

"I felt like I was dying." His voice cracked on the last word, and she saw moisture gather in his eyes. Real tears, or the best performance she'd ever witnessed. "I felt like someone had reached into my chest and torn out something essential. I drove ninety miles an hour up that coast, Karley. I didn't breathe until I saw your car. Until I knew you were safe. Until I knew you were still-"

His forehead dropped to hers. His breath was warm, bourbon-scented, ragged.

"Still mine," he whispered. "Say you're still mine. Say you won't run again."

Karley's chest ached. Her eyes burned. The fear was still there, coiled in her stomach, but it was tangled now with something else-guilt, shame, the terrible flattery of being wanted this desperately.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to-I won't-I promise-"

His mouth found hers.

It wasn't gentle. It was claiming, punishing, grateful, all at once. His hands moved from her face to her waist, pulling her across the sofa cushions until she was pressed against him, the towel rough against her thighs, his skin hot through the thin cotton of her dress.

She kissed him back. She couldn't help it. Her body knew him, responded to him, even as her mind screamed warnings she couldn't quite decipher.

His phone buzzed.

The vibration against the marble tabletop was loud in the quiet room. Karley felt it more than heard it, her senses overwhelmed by Kevon, by his hands sliding up her ribs, by the weight of him pressing her down into the sofa cushions.

She didn't see the screen light up. Didn't see the notification preview, the name that appeared in white text against a black background.

Devora: Kevon, are you sure she'll be there tomorrow? I'm so worried. Any kind of stress could affect my condition.

Kevon saw it.

His eyes opened, staring down at Karley with an intensity that should have terrified her. For a fraction of a second, something cold and calculating moved behind his gaze, something that had nothing to do with desire or relief or love.

Then his hand found the hem of her dress, and his mouth moved to her throat, and the moment passed.

Karley arched beneath him, lost in the familiar tide of sensation, unaware that above her head, the phone screen had gone dark again, hiding secrets she wouldn't discover for hours, for days, for long enough that the damage would already be done.

Kevon Mcconnell closed his eyes and focused on the woman in his arms, on the asset he had almost lost, on the blood type that matched his sister's so perfectly it might as well have been designed.

Tomorrow, they would marry. Tomorrow, the contracts would bind her to him in ways she couldn't imagine.

Tonight, he would make sure she was too exhausted, too satisfied, too overwhelmed to ask any more questions about GPS trackers or midnight drives or the panic that had driven her to the edge of a cliff.

His fingers found the buttons of her dress.

The phone stayed silent on the table, its secrets locked away, waiting.