Don't think I didn't notice, back in Blue River Kitchen, that Leo didn't argue when I called her parents cunts. Don't think I haven't noticed how she never talks about them; how the sole evidence of their existence is a single Polaroid stuck to her refrigerator. There are some people in the world who simply need to be taken care of, though few of them earn it; Leo has earned it from me. She earned this privilege when she laid herself down and shivered beneath my knife. So her parents didn't look after their little girl right—who knows this better than me? See the perfect, clean heart shape I carved upon her, and tell me I'm not taking care of my girl.
"It's healing real clean, baby," I sound like a kid at Christmas—the kind you see in commercials. "I'm going to wipe it and dress it again, okay?"
"Okay." She wiggles her ass at me.
"Don't tease me." I near enough groan as I tear off the wrapper of an antiseptic wipe.
"But it's fun."
"I swear, you do that again and I will not be responsible—"
"Hmm..." She backs into me, wiggles her ass again.
The friction sends static electricity shooting along my thigh.
I grit my teeth, my cock throbbing in the grip of heat, and I bring the wipe straight down hard on her cut...where it will sting to hell.
Leo's giggle drops into a yelp. "Ow! Jesus, you—you cockwomble."
"What?" I take the wipe away and lean down to blow over her bare skin, chuckling to myself. "What the fuck, Leo?"
"You are. You're a complete and utter cockwomble."
"It made even less sense the second time you said it."
"Wanker, arsehole, twat, nonce, knobhead, gobshite...cockwomble." She exhales in exasperation. "It's a natural progression, obviously."
"You do realise that British swearing is still swearing." I squeeze her right buttock, crush the flesh into my palm. When I let go, blood clouds beneath the skin to form a mark the shape of a scrunched butterfly. "Not very ladylike."
"But bent over a desk is ladylike?"
"Bent over a desk should be your default setting." I let my fingers trail down between her thighs to the little pink bulge of her *. She moans when I part her lips. "Wet already, huh? Anybody would think—"
A deafening wail sounds above us, and immediately, echoes spring up in distant offices and far-off halls.
The security alarm.
"Fuck." I jump back, nearly knocking the medikit off the desk.
Leo follows me, shimmying her panties back up while glancing around, her fine features wrinkled in confusion. Outside the office, voices strike up in curses and shouts.
Then my office phone starts to ring.
We lock eyes.
"You'd better get that one," she utters.
I reach over and swipe it up, shoving a finger in my free ear to block out the siren of the alarm. "What?"
"Sir." Harvey's voice, gravelly and urgent. "We have a situation."
"So I gathered." My heart begins to thump. The alarm has never gone off for anything other than a drill. Leo watches me, absentmindedly running her hand up and down the small of my back. "Harvey, what the hell?"
"I need you to stay in your office. Don't move until we come for you."
"Are you serious?"
"I—" He jerks away from the phone as somebody else beckons him. Their dialogue is muffled and sparse. "Sir?"
"I'm here," I call over the incessant bleat of the alarm.
"There's a woman at reception asking for you. We'll contain her, but I need to know..."
My heartbeat migrates to the base of my throat where it pummels like a drunk boxer. "Rachel Fordham," I cut in.
Beside me, Leo goes rigid.
"That's the name she gave, yes. Who is she? I need to know—dammit, Jenson, will you leave it! Don't talk to her!—Sir, who is she to you?"
"Don't move a fucking muscle," I find myself saying. "I'll be down in a minute. Tell her I'm coming."
"No. Aeron, she's—"
I hang up. Despite the noise, the world is suddenly very quiet. My ears feel blocked and strange. My hand finds Leo's.
"So Rachel's downstairs," she says, her tone low.
"Asking for me."
"It's not you she wants to speak to." She drops my hand, begins to scratch at the back of her neck and blink nervously. "It's me." Then she starts backing toward the door, wincing at the brush of her dress against her undressed wound.
"Harvey wants you to stay here. I'll take care of it." My voice gets louder with every step she takes. "Sweetheart, the fucking alarm's gone off. It's not safe."
But she runs.
You'd think a fit guy like me could take a little doll like Leo, huh? Adrenaline does strange things to the body. It makes you thunder down a hallway after your barefoot girlfriend while she disappears into the elevator; it makes you flip the finger at your secretary as you run past, while she gapes at you like a crazy person. It makes you hammer on the closed elevator doors when you get there just three seconds too late.
"Fuck!" I yell, slamming my fists down on it. The alarm still blares, and twenty bemused faces are peering at me from the open door of the news room. "Get back in the fucking room!"
I have to stop Leo from confronting Rachel. Fast. If it wouldn't mean flying down sixteen flights of stairs, I'd take the old-fashioned route, but instead, I hurry to the elevator at the other end of the hall and throw myself into it, bashing the Ground Floor button and sinking back against the mirrored wall.