Page 82 of Haunt the Mall

“When can you come in?” He flexed his shoulders. “Fine. I’ll let you in through the side doors. Text me when you get here.”

Why couldn’t this person come in through the front? He wasn’t really meeting other girls in theater thirteen. He couldn’t be.

“Odds are, I’m going home with you tonight,” he said. His dry tone hollowed out my chest. “I like Kat, but,” he gripped his phone, his voice tight and low. “This is hanging over me, a metaphorical sword of Damocles.”

Yeah, well, I felt like one had just slammed into me. Had I lost my head—and my heart—to someone who planned to lose me after Halloween?

35

Alpha

Victor hung up. He cracked his neck, then his back, every muscle flexing under his shirt. Two minutes ago, I would’ve licked every inch of him. Now, I grabbed my cross instead.

What the hell was going on with him? With us, in fact?

He jerked his head, and I flinched.

Fuck. I should’ve run back to the theater.

His hawklike gaze pinned me in place. He narrowed his eyes and smiled without real humor. “What are you doing here, Miss Silver?”

“Nothing. I-I thought I heard you, so I…” Eavesdropped on accident and broke my own heart.

“You weren’t supposed to leave the theater.” He strode over and brushed my hair away from my face, leaning in so his mouth dragged against my cheek. “Perhaps I should punish you.”

I squeezed my thighs together and shivered. Fuck my traitorous body.

I didn’t want him to punish me. Not now. Not really.

I gently pushed on his chest. “What was that phone call about?”

“Nothing.” His face tightened with an eerie attempt at levity. “Why don’t we go back to theater thirteen?”

He placed his hand at the base of my spine and steered me to the theater.

“You can tell me,” I said, trying to steel myself. “Even if you think it might hurt my feelings.”

“Why would my boring work call hurt your feelings?” He opened the door for me, the door to theater thirteen: home of deviant deeds.

I wrung my necklace tight enough to cinch my fingers, unable to cross the threshold into our theater now that I knew it wasn’t as sacred to him as it was to me.

He tilted his head. “What?”

I hated myself for caring, or even asking after two measly dates, but my anxiety clawed its way out my throat with a hideous fear: “Do you bring other girls in here?”

“What?” He stepped back and furrowed his brow. “Of course not. You’re my VIP.”

Right. I was his. It was all I ever wanted. “It’s just that your phone call, and Sam said—”

“Sam?” He frowned. “When did you talk to him?”

“When you left. Although he did stop by the store earlier today. I accidentally hit him with the door when I saw it moving. He was looking for you, and said he didn’t want to interrupt us.” I twisted into myself as electric nerves scorched my insides. “Then, he said I’m his favorite girl to clean up after, which I think was supposed to be a compliment, but—”

“He was here?” Veins throbbed in his neck and forehead.

Why did that matter? “Yes,” I said.

“And he said all that? That you were his favorite girl and he’d clean up after you?” He jerked his shoulders up to his ears. “Wait. Did you say he came to the store earlier?”