Page 34 of Liars and Liaisons

“I don’t answer to you,” I tell Priya, cradling my phone to my ear. “In fact, it’s the other way around. What happened at the fundraiser after I left?”

“What do youthinkhappened? People took the laced X, passed out, and either woke back up or didn’t. Janus took care of the one who didn’t.”

“Just one?”

“It wasn’t a particularly potent batch,” she says, a shrug somehow audible in her voice. “Maybe if they’d been in a less public setting, they’d have been inclined to do more, but at a mayor’s political gala? We’re lucky anyone took it in the first place. Especially since the public hardly trusts you.”

“They don’t trust me because they believe the lies my family feeds to the media,” I mutter, rage simmering in my gut like hot acid.

“Hey, you don’t have to explain it to me. I’m on your side here.” She pauses. “Although, if youcouldexplain the murder, it might make me a little more sympathetic to your cause.”

“I don’t pay you to be sympathetic. You want the job and my connections, Kohli?”

“Well, yes—”

“Then, shut the fuck up and do as I say.”

Ending the call without waiting for a response, I let out a long, irritated breath and move back toward the window. Typing out a quick message, asking Priya to organize another VIP event, I pretend not to hear the shuffling across the floor above me.

As I pull the curtain aside and continue holding vigil for a woman I can’t everreallyhave, I pretend I don’t know that the girls are at the farmers market in town, and no one else has access to the floor above my den.

Then, I pretend that I’m not completely enamored by the woman outside and that it doesn’t enrage me to be so addicted to her orbit. Like she’s a fucking sign from God that I’m purposely misreading, only because I want to keep her around a bit longer.

Later, after I’ve had two cold showers and milked my dick dry to the thought of Violet bending over, legs spread and taking my dick from behind, I make my way to her quarters. It’s the first I’ve ventured up here during the daylight hours; at night, I’m free to wander as I please, which means I spend an ungodly amount of time just outside her room, debating whether I want to attempt a repeat of our night at the fundraiser.

I don’t know how it’d go over—if she’d freak and need to be drugged again or if she’s just as desperate for human touch as I must be.

Yes, that’s it.

In my time at the estate, stuck with my ghosts and nothing else, I’ve come to crave humanity. Affection. That’s the only reason I’m so drawn to her presence—not to mention that she radiates warmth and light in a way I’ve never fucking known.

Stronger men wouldn’t be able to resist her pull.

The glass doorknob lodges into the wall when I throw open the bedroom door. She’s lounging on the chaise, writing something in the margins of a gardening magazine that I didn’t know we got, and she doesn’t even look up when I enter.

I stand just inside the doorway, practically seething with desire and anger.

A man my age should be more in check with his emotions, but there’s something about this woman that drives me absolutelymad.

“That was rude,” she says finally, swallowing. Her brown eyes slide to my shoes as I walk toward her, as if she’s too afraid to look up.

I clench my jaw, giving her a slow once-over. She’s in one of her worn, threadbare black T-shirts and a pair of baggy black jeans, her obsidian-colored hair spilling down her back. My fist tenses, aching to wrap in the strands and pull.

For some reason, that makes me angry.

“Come with me.”

I don’t wait to see if she’ll follow; when I turn on my heel and stalk back outside, I know that she will, if only because she’s curious. The little sprite is too fucking inquisitive for her own good, as if the call of the unknown is too alluring for her to decline.

A part of me wonders if that’s why she agreed to come here so easily. Aside from the money, of course. Like she wanted to sate her curiosity and find out how the reclusive, terrible Grayson James lives his life in solitude.

The things she’d be able to report to the media aren’t groundbreaking. Nobody really gives two fucks about a man and his ghosts.

I lead her into a sunken sitting room across the hall from my den, closing the door as she enters. Built-in bookshelves line the four walls, and tall windows stretch up above them, casting rays of light in checkered patterns against the wooden floor.

Two dark green velvet armchairs with matching ottomans point toward the fireplace, and tea candles sit on every empty, flat surface—the glass coffee table, on the shelves between leather-bound books, on the lid of the Baldwin spinet in the corner.

“You never told me what I got for fifty grand.”

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