It was obviously occupied by a man, there were clothes all over the place, magazines and opened mail in disarray on every surface and dishes in the sink. The bed had been slept in and hadn’t been made.

Still, even with the mess, the tough guy, mercenary, bounty hunting, private eye business must pay well for Luke to have a Porsche and a LoDo loft like this.

I was now definitely impressed.

This lasted for two seconds, mainly because he had dragged me to the side of the bed and he was now unlocking the bracelet on his wrist.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, watching him.

“Cuffing you to the bed.”

My body went solid.

Then I screeched, “What?”

Too late, I should have run, struggled, something. Instead I went still, like the big dork I was, and he pushed me back with a hand to my chest. I fell to the bed, he leaned into me and before I knew it, or even began to struggle, he had cuffed me to one of the slats.

I stared at my handcuffed to the slat then I stared at him, completely at a loss for words.

He was looking down at me and he seemed deep in thought.

“I don’t like this,” he informed me.

He didn’t like it?

I found some words. Loud ones.

“I don’t like it either!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Uncuff me!”

He put a knee to the bed, grabbed my other wrist then came forward and pinned me with his heavy body. This time I struggled, twisting under him but it was like I didn’t even move. He worked at the cuffs, pulled up my other arm and slapped the bracelet on that one so I had no free hand. He did this all with minimal effort but I was breathing like I had just run a marathon.

Then he got off me, stood and stared down at me.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

“Please tell me you’re joking,” I said softly and I was hoping he was. I was hoping this was all a big joke. He would give me one of his half-grins and say, “Psych.”

“Be good while I’m away,” he answered instead as he turned.

“Get back here! Uncuff me!” I shouted. “Luke, I’ll scream my head off!”

“Do it,” he invited, hitting the button to the elevator and turning to me, looking totally calm and I wished I could throw something at him. “The loft upstairs is vacant, for sale. The people downstairs are still in Florida for the winter. Each loft is the whole floor. No one’s around to hear you.”

The elevators opened, he flipped the lights off and disappeared.

I screamed, “I’m going to kill you!”

The elevator doors closed and he was gone.

Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Good Ava said into my ear.

Oo, we’re in Luke’s bed, Bad Ava cooed into my other one.

Shit.

* * * * *

When you were fuelled with adrenalin, shot at and were lying handcuffed to a bed owned by a man you had a screaming crush on for most of your life, it was impossible to sleep. Not to mention, both arms over your head was not a comfortable position.

So I laid awake thinking of all the ways I wanted to kill Luke.

Then I realized, when I couldn’t find a way I liked, I didn’t want to kill Luke because I wasn’t a killing type of person.

Instead, I focused on all the reasons why I hated men. They cheated on you. They lied to you. They stole your stuff. They made you feel like shit. And they cuffed you to beds.

I was mentally arranging and rearranging all the men I hated in order of the ones I hated the most (Luke being on the top of that list in each arrangement, for obvious reasons) when the elevator doors slid open.

He had been gone a long time; it felt like hours though it probably wasn’t.

He walked silently into the room. I saw him moving because the room was dimly lit with the city lights but he barely made a sound. He put something on the kitchen counter and I watched, quiet and secretly fascinated, as his upper body twisted when he pulled off his tee. I held my breath as I saw skin in the moonlight, and even the definition of muscle, and what I saw was nice.

He turned to the bed, walked to it and sat on the side then bent forward and tugged off a boot.

“Please take me home,” I said quietly. I had decided quiet was the way to go, all my other attempts to get my way (yelling, screaming, shouting and struggling), didn’t work so I was trying out other options.

“No,” he said just as quietly, foiling my new tactic and dropping his boot to the floor.

“I need to take out my contacts,” I told him and this was true.

He stopped taking off his second boot then bent down, picked up the first one and tugged it back on.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he got up.

He walked to the tee he threw on the floor, pulled it on and went to the elevator. “I’ll be back,” he said, standing at the elevators.

“Wait!” I called but too late, the doors opened, he disappeared and the light from the elevator was extinguished as the doors closed.

* * * * *

This time he wasn’t gone long and came back less silent because he was carrying a rustling bag.

“Where did you go?” I asked as he went back to the counter, threw the bag on it and then again pulled off his tee and dropped it to the floor.

“Contact solution and a case,” he said, coming to the bed, sitting on the edge again and tugging off his boot.

“You can just take me home, I have, like, a million cases there and contact solution.” This was obvious but I pointed it out anyway.

“I’m not taking you home, Ava.” He dropped boot one.

“I don’t understand. Why? Whoever they were, they weren’t shooting at me. No one even knew I was there.”

He dropped boot two. “I know. They were shooting at Vincetti.” He pulled off a sock.

I sucked in breath. This was news.

“They were shooting at Dom?” I whispered, unable to wrap my mind around this fact.

“He isn’t a well-liked guy,” he pulled off the other sock.

This didn’t surprise me, as I explained, Dom was a jerk. But shooting out his living room with an Uzi? That seemed a bit much and this was coming from a woman who was searching his house to try to find evidence to nail him in an upcoming divorce battle.

“Why would they shoot out his living room with an Uzi when he wasn’t there?”

“It wasn’t an Uzi. It was an AK-47. And they were sending a message.”

He had turned toward me and was leaned into me, working at the cuffs.

I sucked in breath again, mainly because Luke’s na**d chest was close to my face and it was freaking me out and playing havoc with my vow to stay faithful to my vibrators.