Page 19 of Filthy Liar
“For five years?” He laughs. “Give me some credit.”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? That’s your credit given.”
He doesn’t point out that I’m caged against the wall by a man who easily has sixty pounds on me. We both know I’m not having this conversation entirely willingly. “Why did you run last night?”
That trips me up, but only for a second. “Oh, come on. I saw an ex-lover who I didn’t want to see ever again? And yet, despite my best efforts to evade you, here you are. Imprisoning me.”
His jaw flexes hard. “Ellie, we need to talk.”
I roll my eyes. “We do not. I’m back in town and I would rather not see you again—”
“I know you’re a hacker.”
Well, that is an unexpected statement. Also, wrong. I laugh, giddy with relief, because he just showed his hand. “You know that, do you?”
“There’s no good reason for you to be play-acting as wait staff at that party. And then to show up here, dressed like that, eager to get inside these walls…” He moves in close again, this time so close I can feel the ghost impression of his mouth against mine. Five years should have been long enough to forget the scent of a man, the weight of his body, the taste of his lips…it should be, but it’s not. “I don’t know who you really are or what your game is, but I’m here to warn you off. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Sounds like a threat.”
“Not from me. Is that what you think? That I might hurt you?”
I shiver as he lifts his hand, and he freezes, his touch just barely grazing my cheek.
“You weren’t expecting that.” He grimaces as I shake my head. “Ah, Ellie.” He rubs his thumb against the corner of my mouth. “I never stopped caring. It’s been a long, lonely five years. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Well, fuck me. That’s going to make the disappearing act I do next super fucking awkward.
Can’t be helped, though.
Because I’m not his Ellie. I never was. She doesn’t exist, and if Jason starts digging into Melinda the journalist, that won’t end well for me, either. “Not here,” I whisper. “Tomorrow. Or later tonight. We can talk, I promise.”
He laughs and drops his hand, but just for a second. “You’ll run again.” He steps to the side, curving his fingers around the back of my upper arm like they’re a steel manacle. “You don’t like it here? I can leave. Let’s go back to my place.”
I dig in my heels, dropping my weight just enough to test the strength of his grip. “I don’t want to make a scene, but I will if I have to.”
He tightens his hold. “Ellie—”
“I’m not a hacker,” I whisper fiercely. “I’m a journalist.”
7
Jason
I step back,shock and a bizarre sense of betrayal roiling through me. “You’re a what?”
Ellie smiles, her glossy, bubble-gum pink lips curving with convincing sincerity. She never wore that color before. I don’t like it, an instinctive dislike that makes no sense and really has no bearing on anything. It’s her mouth, she can slick it up however she likes.
But I remember those lips stained red, wrapped around my cock. Stained red and parted as I slid my fingers into her mouth to get them slick. To work us both up for what I would do next.
In every fantasy I’ve had in the time she was gone, her mouth was stained red.
Maybe the bubble-gum pink is as much a disguise as the red once was. Maybe the real Ellie doesn’t wear anything on her mouth at all, and fuck me for thinking about anything other than the task at hand.
Answers. I need answers.
“A member of the press,” she says levelly. “And we can keep this off the record, if you’d like.”
“Everything is off the record,” I growl. “Every fucking thing.”
