Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,3

it home to my mom? She’d love it so much. Maybe it would cheer her up. Who could feel bad around a pink that pink? Around a rose that smelled that rosy?

I took a step back and checked out the gate. If it had been opened recently, there was no sign of it. There was an older security camera, but the light on it was out, so it probably was no longer in use. The stainless-steel intercom was silent and dusty.

I went back to my bike and opened the pouch that was fixed below the seat. It held a spare inner tube, tire-changing tools, my wallet—and a pocketknife.

I took the pocketknife back to the gate. And, after looking around one more time, I reached through the bars at the far end.

It was a struggle. I had to pull one of the thorny branches closer so I could reach the bloom on the end. But I managed to get my blade on the stem. I cut it.

Ouch.

I pulled my hands back—knife, rose, and bloody thumb included. One of the thorns had gotten me good. I sucked on the tiny wound. Stupid how such a small prick could really sting.

I started to turn away. That’s when a hand shot out from between the bars of the gate and grabbed my arm.

“Thief!”

Chapter 2

Billy

“How dare you steal from me! You little twerp!”

I jolted in shock and turned back to the gate, looking first at the large brown leather glove that was wrapped around my forearm, then slowly up long sleeves to the man’s face.

He was pressed up against the gate on the other side so he could reach out far enough to grab me. He glowered at me from between the bars. And that face! I had to blink a few times to figure out what I was seeing.

At first it seemed like an optical illusion, like one of those drawings where, if you stare long enough, the image shifts from one picture to another, a young woman at a dressing table becoming a skull. Then I realized there were, in fact, two distinct halves of his face.

The right side was that of an ordinary man. Well, ordinary if a large, handsome, square-jawed guy with a few days’ worth of dark stubble and piercing blue eyes could be considered ordinary. Unfortunately, in my life men like that were rare. But the left side of his face . . . it was a mask as blank and smooth as a mannequin. It was black, made out of some kind of soft silicone. The mask completely covered that side of his face, from under his floppy brown hair to his jaw, from the middle of his nose to his ear. The only break in the mask was a cutout around his mouth and an opening for his eye.

At first, I thought it was a costume, or . . . or, I don’t know . . . protection or something, like a welding shield. But in another blink I realized that there was something wrong with his face. He wore a high-collared gray shirt, but red scars were visible on his neck between the top of the collar and the bottom of the mask. And the eye that looked out from the hole had reddened skin around it and a milky film over the iris.

I took in a big, shuddering breath. He looked so mysterious and . . . dangerous. Like he’d stepped out of my darkest fantasies. I might have gawked forever, except he didn’t let me. He shook me, his fingers tight on my arm.

“I asked you a question. What do you think you’re doing, stealing from me?”

Finally, the situation penetrated my brain. Oh. Right. I was in trouble.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I didn’t know anyone lived here. It looks so . . .”

“That makes it okay to take things off the property? Do you think the gate and wall were put here for a shoot with Architectural Digest? No. They mean one thing: keep out!”

I frowned. “Okay. But I didn’t come inside.”

“Your arm came inside. You came far enough inside to steal from me.”

“Sorry,” I repeated lamely.

A little thrill of fear thrummed in my belly. Here we were, at the dead end of Hillcrest Avenue where no one could hear me scream, and some maniac had me by the arm. He could be violent. He could be a serial killer for all I knew. I’d watched too many horror movies not to have those