“We told him.”
“How’d you know?”
He pointed and I followed his arm to see a camera in the corner of the room, the light on it was green.
God-damn.
The boys in the back had been watching.
My eyes went back to him. “You can’t keep me here,” I said.
He shook his head to tell me I was wrong.
This made me angry.
I had kind of a temper (okay, so maybe one could say I had a helluva temper) and right then I needed to go before Luke got there (and calculating I had about a minute to make my getaway) and not being able to go got the better of me (frankly, when I had a moment to look back, I was kind of shocked it took that long).
“Get out of my way,” I snapped, charged ahead and tried to dodge him at the last minute. He caught me and swung me around. I struggled and, laughably quick, he subdued me, my back pressed tight to his front, my arms crossed in front of me, his hands at my wrists.
We were both slightly bent at the waist and I was still struggling, flipping out that all of a sudden I was stand-up wrestling with a guy named Mace at the same time trying to pull free, when the door opened.
Mace and I stayed locked together but we both froze and our heads jerked toward the door.
Luke stood there.
Fuckity, f**k, f**k, f**k.
I noticed instantly he looked even better than ever. Tall (at least four inches taller than me and I was five foot eight), lean and built, wearing a skintight black t-shirt, black cargo pants and black boots. His thick hair was clipped short to his head, not a buzz cut, but short. The beard was gone and in its place was the baddest-ass mustache I’d ever seen; thick and black across his lip and trimmed neat down the sides of his mouth.
Holy cramoly! I wanted to know at that very moment what it felt like to have that mouth, with that ‘tache, on me; on any part of me. I didn’t care which part and I wouldn’t have been choosy.
His eyes came to me, slid to Mace then back to me.
Then one side of his mouth went up in a half-grin. At the sight, I melted into Mace and even though he had to feel the fight had gone out of me he didn’t let me go.
“Too late again,” Luke muttered, sounding amused, his eyes on me but I got the feeling he wasn’t talking to me.
“Not quite,” Shirleen told him and she sounded like she was trying hard not to laugh.
This exchange confused me but I had no time to ask or say anything at all. Luke’s eyes moved away from me and scanned the room. Obviously looking for something then not finding it they sliced back to Shirleen.
“Where’s Ava?” he asked, his eyes narrowed, the arms around me tightened and both my captor and I straightened.
“What do you mean, where’s Ava? Boy, you looked right at her,” Shirleen answered.
I heard a door open but, since it was behind my back and there was a big, solid guy there I couldn’t look. Not that I would have. Luke’s eyes had cut to me and pinned me to the spot.
I went still and he stared at me.
“Hey Luke,” I said, feeling and sounding stupid.
His brows came together. “Ava?” he asked.
“In the flesh,” I tried for a jaunty smile even though Mace still hadn’t let me go and I felt like a big dork.
Luke did a body scan then his eyes came back to mine. “What the f**k happened to you?”
There was definitely a sort of pissed off accusation in his tone. Not the reaction I had dreamed of (quite a lot) when Luke saw the new me.