Lion's Dangerous(Kings of the Jungle #1)(35)

Cunt. You owe me money.

Someone had fingerpainted the uneven words with an oily red substance on the glass panel of her storm door. It took a moment of stunned staring before her brain processed the message sent by her eyes, but once her brain got on board, adrenaline flooded her system, a hormone overload on top of the the night's roller coaster of emotions. With her system locked between fight and flight instincts, she stood paralyzed for long minutes.



       
         
       
        

What should she do? Where-

The sound of a car door closing galvanized her.

"Inside," she whispered. Inside would be safer than outside. Her door was still firmly shut, no signs of a break-in. Just the message, the tail of the last "y" dripping a blood-red trail down the glass.

Pulse hammering in her ears, she tried not to leave her back to the street. The nape of her neck crawled with a pervasive feeling of being watched as she fumbled with her keys and, excruciating seconds later, finally plunged into the safety of her dark, quiet house. She bolted the door with shaking hands and stumbled across the dark living room, intent on the windowless bathroom in the middle of the house.

In the dark, behind another locked door, she sat on the toilet lid and clutched her phone. At a loss for what to do next. Police? Did this count as an emergency?

Without conscious thought, she found Jude Burke's entry on her contact list and opened a text screen. She typed and deleted two drafts of a text before settling on

Can you install home security tomorrow?

Shit! Immediately, regret snapped back at her. Why had she reached for him? They didn't even have a professional relationship anymore.

Nevermind.

After sending that follow-up, she deleted the message string as well as his contact info and looked up the number for the local police precinct. Before she could dial, a text came through.

What's wrong?

Lily rubbed her forehead, wondering how to respond. Coming up blank, she ignored him and did what she should have in the first place-she called the police to report her non-emergency. Not an emergency because she hadn't heard even a floorboard creak in the house since she'd entered, and she needed to downgrade the situation, even if she was only fooling herself.

While she was on the phone with the police, another call beeped on the line. Jude. She dismissed the call and he tried again. The phone vibrated in her palm.

Not quite sure why, she answered. "Hey," she said, staring at the shape of the vanity in the dark.

"Are you all right?" Overran her greeting.

Lily blinked at the hard edge of urgency in his tone and frowned as a warm puddle of comfort gathered in her belly. She was tempted to hang up on him. Her self-preservation instincts felt off, though, and indecision left her stuttering. "I'm-yeah."

"You don't sound it."

She exhaled, started again. "I am alright, but I'm having an issue. It's not an emergency. Can you schedule me for a consultation tomorrow? Maybe an installation? Of course I'll pay the fee to start a new contract."

He held silent on the other end of the line, and why shouldn't he with her hot and cold signals? She counted to ten, was about to write him off for a dropped call, when he finally said, "When do you want me?" 

With no other provocation, despite the night she'd had and the horror at her doorstep, and as much as she tried to keep her tone professional, her pussy began to throb. She pressed her thighs together, but failed to keep the raw, husky dip from her voice. "I have to open the store at eleven on Saturdays. If you can be here by 10:30, I can let you in before I go."

She could have brought him in earlier, knew he would come, but the idea of being alone with him made her shudder-and not with revulsion.

"I'll be there. Have you called the police?"

"They're sending someone over now. I should go so I can meet them at the door."

"I'm not far away. I'll come by to take a look for myself."

"No, please. I'm all right. It wasn't a break-in. The morning's soon enough." The chime of her doorbell jump-started her pulse. Lily stood and forced herself to leave the bathroom. "I have to get the door."

"Verify it's the cops before you let anyone inside," he warned. "I'll wait until you know."

True to his word, Jude remained on the line until the officers outside confirmed their identity. She missed him when he disconnected, taking a sense of safety with him.





12





The next morning, Lily's first half-awake realization was that every muscle in her body was deliciously stiff. She stretched in the yellow arrow of sunlight angling through her window and imagined she could feel individual threads of her four-hundred-thread-count sheets against her overly sensitized skin. She loved being fucked on her luxurious sheets. Adored the exquisite sensation of bare skin against bare skin on clean, crisp cotton.