Page 38 of Wicked Player

His voice had gone so cold, I shivered from it.

He dressed quickly and the door clicked behind him before my muscles were in working order.

I struggled to sit and ripped off the blindfold. The soft light from the lamp in the corner did nothing to diminish the sting in my eyes.

It wasn’t from the light. It was fromhim. The man who had just completely undone me and walked away like I was nothing when he’d shown such care.

Which meant as I dressed, I wiped tears, stupid frustrating and pointless tears from my eyes.

It’s just sex, Elizabeth. Don’t screw up again.

The problem was, I didn’t know how I’d screwed up this time.

* * *

I slidinto my chair at my desk and finally removed my sunglasses. Who cared that’d I’d been inside for ten minutes already. My eyes were puffy and red, from lack of sleep. I tossed and turned all night, unable to stop thinking about the weekend and the last several days. More than once I’d punch my pillow, envisioning it as Connor’s face.

He’d called me a handful of times, which meant bad things. When Connor scooped a story, he was relentless. When he wanted something, he fought his heart out until it became his.

But why after six months was he fighting for me?

“Ugh,” I groaned, and logged into my computer. I was only in the station for a few hours before lucky me, I had to spend more time following Gage around.

It would be so much easier to do this story if the guy was a jerk.

“Jeez. Rough weekend? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound like that.”

I glanced at Will over the top of our computer monitors. “Like what?”

“A wounded animal.” He cringed. “And no offense, you sort of look like shit. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, but thanks for the pep talk.” My tone was listless. Defeated. It took six months to get over Connor and find the strength to re-start a huge portion of my life and in a weekend, I was just as miserable as I’d been the night he ended things with me.

Awesome. Freaking Connor.

“Hey. What is it? Connor again?”

News reporters were a bunch of gossips. It was part of our job. Part of life. It hadn’t taken long at all for word of our relationship to hit the news stations when it started and our break-up news traveled twice as fast.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I know he’s covering the hospital thing so I assume you had to see him this weekend. And there’s only one other time I’ve seen you so miserable.”

His brows arched above his glasses. Yeah yeah. Six months ago. I’d cried for weeks. Carried around a tube of hemorrhoid cream to reduce the constant puffiness around my eyes. Then I’d slept with cucumbers covering my eyes and drank more gallons of water than healthy.

He’d left me a wreck and if I was looking even mildly as bad as all of that, I was in serious trouble.

“It’s not Connor.” I didn’t even want to say his name much less admit to him being part of the reason I had very few hours of sleep.

The other cause was a man behind a black mask, whispering dirty words into my ear while he screwed me senseless. Except in my dreams, that voice sounded a lot like Gage Bryant and when I’d ripped off the mask in my dream, it’d been Gage’s face inches from mine.

So yeah, working today and following him around wasn’t going to help a darn thing.

Maybe I needed to call off seeingJohnuntil this story was done. Another complication in my life certainly wouldn’t improve anything.

“If you need to talk…”

I burst out laughing at the painful sound in Will’s voice. He was a good guy, but a guy all the same. “No thanks,” I assured him and smiled when relief softened his features. “If I need to bitch, I’ll grab Amanda.”

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