Leather Bound by Shanna Germain Page B

supposed to meet at Cream,’ I said. The air was coming easier now and my head didn’t actually hurt where I’d bonked it. Only my ankle continued to whine about being twisted. It was the same ankle I’d broken when I was in college, during a particularly stupid bike-riding incident that we won’t talk about, but this time the pain wasn’t nearly as bad. Hopefully, I’d just pulled one of my usual dumb moves and hadn’t actually broken anything.
    ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
    I nodded, but didn’t get up.
    Kyle, clearly realising that I wasn’t going to get up anytime soon, plopped himself down beside me.
    For the first time I really looked at him. I mean, other than the look of ‘Holy crap, what’s he doing there, I’m falling on him.’ He was dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt, topped with a grey suit jacket. His blond hair was brushed back so that it fell in long strands across his forehead. I always forgot how beautiful his eyes were, green like perfectly ripe olives.
    And, at the moment, they were very very confused olives.
    ‘I thought you said to meet you at your house at seven,’ he said. ‘I’m a little early, because we hadn’t talked and …’ He stopped, shaking his head. I knew him well enough to know that meant he was trying not to get upset. My heart did a little tug of guilt and sadness.
    ‘Not my house,’ I said. ‘The Cat House. Cat.’ As though that made it so much clearer for him. Considering I’d never even heard of the Cat House until today. And hadn’t actually said the Cat House on the phone.
    ‘You wanted me to meet you at the Cat House?’ he asked.
    ‘No, but I thought you might come with me. Wait. You know the Cat House? How?’ Because even though Stefan had been keeping a tight lid on it while we’d talked, I’d heard the surprise in his voice when I asked after the Cat House, and something beyond surprise when I said I had tickets. So why wasn’t Kyle looking confused?
    ‘I –’ he started.
    ‘Wait.’ We were still sprawled on the ground. I rotated my ankle and was rewarded with nothing more than a small blip of pain. Awesome. ‘Help me up first?’ I asked.
    He took my hands in his and pulled me up. I took a tentative step on my aching ankle, and found it held me surprisingly well.
    ‘Inside,’ I said at his inquisitive look.
    The door was still open, of course. It wasn’t like I’d found the time to lock it, or even shut it, between leaving and making my flying leap-fall over Kyle.
    I wanted to talk about the Cat House, about why everyone seemed to know about it but me, about what he was doing there, and about a million other things. But what I didn’t want to talk about was probably the very thing that Kyle did want to talk about.
    As he helped me into the house and shut the door behind me, I figured that was exactly what he was going to ask and I steeled myself against it. He had every right to; I’d practically run away from him and hadn’t looked back. I still didn’t know what I’d say, but it was time to face it, to stop running away from it, whatever the consequences. He deserved that, and probably much more. Definitely much more.
    I turned as he locked the door from the inside, my shoulders square, prepared. Instead of being met with a question, I was met with a surprisingly close view of Kyle’s face. His green gaze was raking me, taking in the red dress, the stockings. I could feel the cold of it, not faraway cold, not angry cold. Not even really cold, but it was the only way I could think of to describe the intensity, the laser-focus with which he was looking at me.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘I want to know,’ he said. ‘why you have a client that takes you to the Cat House. I want to know why you’re dressed the way you are, because it’s hot as hell. And I want to know if your ankle is OK. Mostly, I want to know the answer to the question that I asked you days ago.’
    ‘I have some questions, too,’ I started, but he put