But he didn’t stay where he was, and no music came on. I twisted around to watch him grabbing a stack of papers off his shelf. What the hell was going on? I was intrigued, waiting for my sexy little surprise.
“You sure you can handle this, good girl?”
I nodded eagerly. Whatever game we were playing, I was all in.
“You sure?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Because once you see this, you won’t be able to unsee it.”
I rolled my eyes and nodded again. “I said I can handle it, didn’t I? Come on, you know I can handle it.”
He took his time closing the gap between us, which gave me far too long listening to the agonizing sounds of the serial killer in the movie choking a woman to death. As much as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t.
The tense music wasn’t helping much either. I felt like I was walking the plank, dangling over the edge, and trying my hardest not to fall into the shark infested waters.
“I will give you a minute alone with these then.” Brandon winked. “While I get us more drinks.”
I didn’t take my eyes off of him as he grabbed the wine glasses from the table and headed into the kitchen. I didn’t want him to go, I didn’t want to read anything, but I was grateful for the chance to admire his ass as he walked away.
He was so freaking good looking. I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around him wanting me. My God, if my friends back in my hometown could see me now…
Not that I wanted to think about my hometown. At all.
“Okay, what is this?” I murmured once I was alone. Since it seemed important to Brandon to prove how much of a bad boy he was to me, I guess I would give him some time…
What the hell?
I couldn’t work out what this paperwork meant at first. It wasn’t like anything I had ever seen before. The documents were from different states, all over the country, all with Brandon’s name on them. Or variations of Brandon’s name anyway. There were some with different spellings of his name, Bryndon, Branden, and some with other surnames.
I guess he had moved about a lot, right?
A thick lump of something started to form in my throat as I digested what I was actually looking at. It slowly started to make sense. These were police records from all over, in many states, for all kinds of crimes. Some crimes I didn’t even know what the names meant.
Felony, Battery, Extortion…
These couldn’t be real, could they? They were just a part of this game…whatever we were playing. Surely? But the more my eyes scanned over the pages, the more it hit me what the lump in my throat was. Pure, unbridled terror.
Brandon really was a ‘bad boy’ in the purest sense of the word. Would I have gone anywhere near him if I knew that he had a rap sheet this long? If I knew he’d spent time locked up? All of a sudden, all the things he’d done which I thought were kinda hot before, seemed a little different.
Stealing the keys and breaking into my room.
Doing the same again while I was asleep.
Setting up a live stream of me sleeping…
I’d thought of rational, fun explanations for it before. I leaned in to the sexy side of it because I didn’t want to cave to the nerves. But now it was all feeling a little bit more sinister. Like I needed to be afraid, like I should get away from him, not spend the whole weekend alone with him.
How did he get a job as a professor? How was he allowed anywhere near students like me? My heart sunk. If Maggie knew this, she wouldn’t be encouraging this at all. She’d be over here already, rescuing me before something really bad could happen to me.
But she didn’t know.
I was the only one who knew this.
Well, me and Brandon, and now he knew that I was aware.
Shit, was I in some real trouble here?
“So, what do you think?” Brandon leaned his head around the doorframe and grinned as he held onto the wine glasses that were now full. “Am I badass what?”
His voice was sounding more sinister by the minute. I forced myself to grin as fear gripped my heart. If I was going to stay safe, then I needed to play along until I could escape, because there was no telling what would set Brandon’s dark side off, but from what I’d seen, rejection was a good guess at a trigger.
“You really are,” I said through gritted teeth. “Who would have believed it?”
What was I doing here. I had to get out.