“Fuck,” I said to myself.

You can say that again, Bad Ava agreed.

You shouldn’t curse, even if you have been kidnapped. It isn’t very ladylike, Good Ava chastised.

I ignored both of them, pulled open my medicine cabinet and got my contact solution. I had just readied the case with solution when I saw a movement at the bathroom door.

I whirled and shrieked (yes, girlie shrieked), my hand coming up to my chest.

Luke stood there.

Okay, so, maybe it didn’t take long to scan the neighborhood. And I was seeing that I should have probably closed the bathroom door.

Luke’s eyes were on my torso and, even standing all the way across the bathroom, I could tell they were ink.

Ho-ly shit.

I turned back to the sink, trying to be cool. It wasn’t like I was na**d or anything. In fact, I had dresses that I wore out in public that showed more skin.

I leaned into the mirror and pulled open an eye with one hand, my index finger of the other up and at the ready to take out the contact.

Luke materialized behind me in the mirror. Close behind me.

I poked myself in the eye.

After I quit blinking, I glared at him. I was certain he’d be laughing or at least giving me a half-grin.

He was not. His mind was clearly on other things. I knew this when his hand, fingers splayed, hit my side and slid around my midriff. His eyes watched its movement in the mirror.

My knees did a little wobble.

“We need to make up the futon,” I told him, deciding to pretend the wobble didn’t happen.

“Why?” he asked.

“So you can sleep there,” I replied and successfully (thank God) pulled out the contact.

“I’m sleepin’ with you,” he said, his hand sliding further across my midriff toward my other side, which meant to accommodate its motion, my body moved back into his.

“No you aren’t.”

“Yes I am.”

“Luke, I don’t want to argue about this.”

His eyes moved to mine in the mirror. “Then don’t.”

Shit. How did you respond to that?

My head dropped and I started cleaning my contact in my palm and widened my net to try and pretend everything else that was happening to my body wasn’t happening (rapid heartbeat, blood warming, ni**les hardening). Not just the knee wobble.

I pulled at his arm to lean into the mirror to take out the other contact. He watched me do this, which, I might add, was supremely nerve-wracking. I got the contact on the first go and leaned back, squirting solution on it in my palm to clean it. Luke’s hand slid up to the side of my breast so his forearm was pressed underneath them.

There was the knee wobble again.

Hell and damnation.

I looked at us in the mirror and we were fuzzy. But even fuzzy I liked what I saw.

“Luke.”

I watched as his head bent and felt as his mouth hit my neck.

“I like this,” he said against my neck and showed me what he meant by rubbing his thumb along the side of my breast.

It felt nice.

I closed my eyes then opened them again.

“Noah liked it too,” I told him, calmly morphing into Barlow Super Bitch but my heart was beating so fast I thought it would tear right out of my chest I was finding it hard to breathe. None of the physical manifestations of Luke’s touch stopped me. “He liked it a lot. So much, it’s kinda surprising he didn’t steal it when he cleaned out my bank accounts, took all my Auntie Ella’s gold jewelry and disappeared.”

I felt and saw Luke’s head come up and I was pretty certain he was looking at me in the mirror.

“He should have taken it, a memento of good times,” I went on, seriously Barlow Super Bitch.

“Let’s go back to the part about cleaning out your bank accounts,” Luke’s mouth was close to my ear and I actually felt his deep voice rumble through my body.

“Five thousand, three hundred and twenty-five dollars, everything I had in savings and checking. It took him days of maximum ATM withdrawals but, you have to hand it to him, he stuck to it.”

I ignored the scary, pissed off life force emanating from Luke that filled the room as I opened the medicine cabinet. I replaced the solution and aimed for the bottle that I knew was my face soap and as I did this Luke’s arm dropped away.

Then I felt Luke’s presence move away.

When I knew he was gone (and peeked to check), I put both my hands to the basin and dropped my head.

Now, that wasn’t nice, Good Ava sounded disappointed.

It wasn’t, Bad Ava, surprisingly, agreed.

“Shut up,” I whispered, washed my face, brushed my teeth, slathered with moisturizer and went to my room.

I closed the door this time and changed into my pajamas (cream, silky-satin, drawstring pants and a matching camisole with spaghetti straps, gathers under my br**sts and a low, straight back that cut just under my shoulder blades). I got in bed and pulled up the covers.

I didn’t know where Luke was but I told myself I didn’t care noting that now I was lying to myself.

I was planning my strategy to get all men out of my life which included gaining back every one of those seventy-five pounds and then some by eating my way through the entire inventory of LaMar’s donuts every day for a month as well as firing Riley, when the door opened and Luke walked in.

The house behind him was dark and so was the room. As I watched his shadowy form move, he walked right to the bed and sat on the edge like he’d been in my room hundreds of times.

“Luke, the futon is in the second bedroom,” I informed him.

I heard his boot hit the floor.

“Or, you can sleep on the couch downstairs,” I went on.

I heard his other boot hit the floor.

“There’s pillows and blankets on the futon, I got them out,” I persevered.

He leaned forward a bit, lifted his arms so his hands went between his shoulder blades and he tugged off his tee.

“Luke!”

He stood and for a second I thought he was going to leave. Also I had to admit, for a second, I felt unbelievably disappointed.

Instead, he dropped his cargo pants and I heard his belt hit the floor.

Holy crap!

Then he pulled the covers back and settled on his back in the bed.

I came up on an elbow and glared at him or in his general direction. “You aren’t sleeping here.”

“What’s Noah’s last name?”

I blinked in the darkness.

“Excuse me?”

“His last name.”

“Dexter, why?”

“He white?”