After Dark: The Complete Series

by Kahlen Aymes

  “Ugh,” she moaned as her stomach turned again. “How many times can I puke?” She reached down for the large metal bowl strategically positioned on the floor next to the couch and lurched into it violently. The contents of her stomach were emptied some five hours earlier and she was left with dry heaves, which seemed even worse. She’d tried some ginger ale but even that wasn’t staying down.

  She rolled onto her side, set the bowl back down, and pulled her blanket closer around her body as a new set of chills made her teeth chatter. Becca wanted to bring over some soup or Pepto Bismol, but Angel had adamantly refused the offer. It seemed selfish to risk Becca or Jillian getting the horrid virus, so the knock at the door came as a surprise.

  She wearily got up, her blanket still wrapped firmly around her, the fuzzy socks on her feet making her steps silent. “Bec, I told you not to come,” she muttered as each step she took pounded in her skull.

  “Dr. Hemming, it’s Cole Avery. Are you all right? Can I please speak with you?”

  “I’m sicker than a dog, Cole. It’s not something you want to catch, so another time?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  Angel hesitated, leaning her forehead on the door, the coolness a stark contrast to her burning skin. “It’s your funeral,” she said as she undid the deadbolt.

  “Dr. Hemming, you shouldn’t open your door without verifying who it is,” Cole warned as he entered toting a brown shopping bag.

  Angel rolled her eyes. “I recognized your voice. Did Alex send you to check up on me? And you can call me Angel.” She gestured him in with a wave of her hand, forgetting the bowl by the couch. “Oh, God.” She put a hand to her head as he noticed it.

  “You really are sick.”

  “Really? I thought I was on vacation.”

  Cole’s mouth lifted in a sly smile, and Angel couldn’t help but see the resemblance to Alex. She picked up the bowl to take it down the hall and into the bathroom.

  “You never answered me. Did Alex send you?” she called.

  “We’ve all wondered why you didn’t go into your office today, so yes.”

  Angel walked back in and crawled back onto the sofa, curling in on herself. “Well, you can tell him that you’ve personally seen me and I look like hell.”

  “No, because he doesn’t know we’ve spoken.” He grimaced as he noticed her shivering. “Can I get you anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, thanks. I think it’s a twenty-four hour bug. But it’s miserable.”

  Cole sat down in a chair across from her and pulled something from the bag. “The surveillance equipment is three flights down, and as a precaution, I’d like to set this up.”

  “You have an apartment in this building?” she asked incredulously. “Are you fucking kidding me?” She was starting to get pissed. It was too much, even if it was for her own good. Alex was an arrogant bastard!

  “Um, yeah. Actually, we’ve got the whole building wired in the common areas. It’s illegal to set up cameras in here…”

  “The whole building? Did he bribe the landlord or what?”

  “Alex will be pissed that I’m telling you, but, uh, he is the landlord.” He shifted uncomfortably under Angel’s surprised glare. “Sort of. Sorry.”

  “He’s gone too far with this. If I wasn’t so freaking sick, I’d be yelling my head off.”

  “Angel, he’s Alex. He doesn’t follow the same rules as normal people. I’m not saying it’s right, but he means well.”

  She sighed but didn’t answer.

  “In order to protect you, I came up with this. It’s a baby monitor modified to handle the extra distance. I can’t watch you, but I can listen. If you’ll agree.”

  “It’s a little late to be asking my permission, don’t you think?”

  “It’s for—”

  Her hand shot up to stop him, even from her prone position. “Don’t say it’s for my own good. Will you run to Alex with reports and audio tapes?”

  Cole flashed a smile and shook his head. “No tapes. I only tell Alex things regarding your safety. But these—” he held up a handful of gadgets, “—will make sure we have the opportunity to get to you if needed. I also need a key. If you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, sure. Next you’ll want to know what kind of tampons I use.” Angel’s stomach protested again, and she grimaced as she went to the drawer in the kitchen where she kept a spare key. “How do you think your brother will react when he hears you have a key and he doesn’t?”

  Cole placed a monitor on one of the end tables and plugged it in. “I don’t really care. He asked me to do a job, and I’m doing it. Alex can bite me.”

  Angel paused as a small laugh broke from her chest. “I think… I really like you, Cole. Alex can bite me,” she mused. “I love it.”

  * * *

  “This is Angeline. It’s just about midnight, so what’s your confession?”

  “Which one do you want?” The unexpected familiarity of the voice made Angel stiffen in her chair and her heart sink. Angel glanced quickly up at the window toward Christina, but the other girl had ducked around the corner and out of her eye line.

  It was three weeks since that beautiful, horrible night. Two since the stilted phone conversation when he said he’d let their relationship go. Angel thought, surely, if he were going to call and confront her, he would have done so before this. She’d been nervous about it, never expecting Alex to slink away into nothingness, and spent the past Friday evening sitting on the edge of her seat waiting for a moment just like this.

  Her stomach did somersaults, and her heart beat wildly in her chest.

  “Whichever you’d like my opinion on,” she said cautiously.

  Christina was looking through the window, totally aware of who was on the phone. What the fuck was she thinking putting Alex’s call through? Angel shot her a hateful glance.

  “Huh, you’ll regret saying that,” he said caustically. His tone was hard and cold, miles away from the hot, husky voice she’d heard the last time they’d made love or fucked or whatever the hell it was. At this point, she wasn’t sure. Her emotions were all over the place when it came to Alex. She was scared for him, but worse, scared of him, and she was smart enough to recognize it. Running away was uncharacteristic; she didn’t run from Mark Swanson as much as she ran from Alex Avery.

  Silence boomed like a bass drum.

  Angel was sure she could hear him breathing—in and out, in and out. Her chest hurt in sympathetic unison, and she glanced down at her shaking hands, clasping them together to try to still them. She could almost hear the wheels cranking inside his brain, searching for the words that would ruin her resolve.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me my name, Angeline?” He was mocking her in the silken voice. So smooth, but harder than she’d ever heard it, and it hurt like hell.

  “Names don’t seem important tonight. Uhhmmm…” she cleared her throat. “What did you want to discuss?”

  “I thought discussion wasn’t something to be valued, relationships… dispensable.”

  “You sound angry and unlike yourself.”

  “Careful. Your listeners might think we know each other; unless you’re a mind reader,

  Angeline. Are you?” His voice was a soft seduction, his words measured for ultimate impact. He knew how it affected her, and he was using it like a weapon.

  “Not at all. Who has affected you this way?” Angel’s own voice took on a harder tone as she dared him to expose her own relationship on air. She knew he was angry, but she was growing more impatient as the seconds ticked by. Although he deserved more, and part of her ached for him, she couldn’t tell him that she was too afraid of heartbreak to be with him. Especially when he’d professed that love wasn’t even real.

  “I don’t even know what the hell to call her. My lover or my obsession… Whatever she is or was… She disappeared from my life without much of an explanation. Something was going on and she wouldn’t tell me the truth, so I was left wondering
what the hell happened. She kept me in the dark and then got angry when I took it upon myself to find out what was going on.”

  “Maybe she had a good reason to leave you.” Angel closed her eyes, her heart thudding sickeningly in her chest as she struggled to keep her voice even. Her hands were shaking, so she once again clasped them together on the desk in front of her.

  He laughed out loud. “That’s funny. I mean, freaking hilarious,” he said bitterly.

  “Is that such an impossibility?”

  “What do you mean?” he questioned but then he continued. He knew. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. She thinks I’ve always been the one to walk away in relationships. I guess it was true. But this was different, and she didn’t even give me a chance. Not really.”

  “Maybe she was afraid she’d become another notch on your bedpost.”

  “Maybe she should have talked to me,” he spat bitterly. “We agreed to be honest. I meant it, but apparently, she didn’t.”

  “What was your relationship based on? Possession of the unattainable? What was the attraction, really?”

  He huffed loudly into the phone. “It was… everything about her. She was definitely high maintenance. But she was beautiful. Soooo, so beautiful.”

  “Maybe she wanted to be more to you than beautiful. Sometimes being a pretty possession isn’t enough.”

  “How could she be a possession when we were both possessed? Every time I tried to get closer to her, I felt her pull further away. She seemed so strong. I never expected her to turn tail and run away.”

  “Did you ask her? If she was afraid, I mean.”

  “Not like I should have. That was my mistake. How do you think she was afraid of me?”

  Tears pricked at the back of Angel’s eyes and her throat tightened. She tried to breathe and then to speak. “Uh… most women are afraid of beautiful men with the world at their fingertips, who think they can have anything just by reaching out and taking it, usually with no regard for the havoc they cause.”

  “Who said I was beautiful?” he goaded, and Angel had the grace to flush.

  “Maybe she is stronger than most; strong enough to think and protect her heart; to put more worth on herself. Maybe she needed to be more than a conquest.”

  He could hear the tightness in her voice, and his heart ached, but he laughed bitterly. “She made me the conquest! In ways I never expected or knew how to deal with—I’ve been hungrier than I’ve ever been.”

  Angel laughed, but it was forced. So forced. “You poor thing. Did you have a hard-on and nowhere to put it? I’m sure there are hundreds of orifices at your disposal.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Angel? I’ve had enough of this ridiculous game! You know how fu—”

  Angel quickly hit the hold button and ran a hand through her hair. “Um… we need to take a quick break. I’ll be right back.”

  She was trembling as she stood, leaning over the desk, bracing herself on her arms, and wondering how in the hell she was going to get through the next two hours. She wanted to leave and lock herself away somewhere. Not in her apartment because now his presence lingered. How could I be so fucking stupid? She sank into her chair and buried her face in her hands.

  Shaking, she pushed the button to connect the call off-air. “Alex… just let it go. You agreed the last time we talked. It’s done.”

  She ended the call without letting him answer. What a coward, but she couldn’t listen to that voice without giving into the weakness he created.

  It wasn’t Alex that she hated. In fact, the opposite was true, but love made her weak. Want made her weak, and she knew what it meant to be hungry. It was the weakness she despised. She was unable to stop herself from feeling and falling… terrified of losing herself and all of the things that made her, her. She couldn’t let it get to a place where she was absolutely unable to save herself. But maybe it was already too late.

  * * *

  Alex stared down in disbelief at the now dark screen of his cell phone, her words echoing around him. Damn it to hell! It was bad enough that he hadn’t been able to talk to her when he was worried sick, but to have her hang up on him?

  “Alex, just let it go. You agreed the last time we talked. It’s done.” Angel’s voice had been contrite and she’d hung up before he could answer. Alex was boiling.

  He had said it, but it wasn’t even fucking started as far as he was concerned! There was an ache in her voice and it called to an answering pang deep inside himself that he didn’t even know existed before her. He’d never been this ready to take hold of someone in his whole goddamn life! Angel could fuck letting go!

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” he yelled into the darkness of his apartment.

  He stopped, torn between smashing the phone against the wall and rushing across town to confront her. The hand that wasn’t holding his phone clenched, opened, and then clenched tight again. He walked back and forth in front of the windows in his great room, the lights of the Chicago night blinked for as far as the eye could see and the black inkiness of Lake Michigan along the East Side was the only interruption. It was raining hard, the droplets running down the windows in sheets. He wasn’t sure if it was rage or the water that made the lights blur before his eyes. Alex’s skin felt uncomfortably hot—burning—and his throat ached.

  How does one woman turn your world completely upside down and leave you completely fucking reeling? He was still off-balance as much as he’d been the day after they’d made love. It took that beautiful, surreal night when they both surrendered to each other to show him the truth of what he wanted. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced, it left him stunned and elated, completely unprepared for how it ripped at his guts and filled his heart. For the first time, he felt vulnerable and completely helpless to change it. She owned him, but surprisingly, his eyes were finally wide open to possibilities he’d never believed existed.

  When he called her later the same day and then the days after and she wouldn’t take his calls, he was left wondering if it really had been a dream that was driving him insane. He’d barely been able to keep his head in work, thinking he imagined her scent on the sheets the next morning. Angel completely closing off after they had been so incredibly close left him bereft. So close; barely any words had been spoken, yet he remembered every breath she’d taken that night, every touch of her fingertips, her body’s immediate response to his, and each searing kiss. And how he’d lost himself in the dream of her. She was a beautiful, real dream… and nightmare at the same time.

  Alex looked down at his phone again in disbelief. His heart was racing as if it would fly from his chest and the skin of his face and neck burned like fire. As he stood motionless in the middle of the room, he couldn’t breathe.

  “What the hell is happening to me?” Alex ran a hand over his jaw and swept it across the back of his neck. His breathing labored in frustration; anger and something he couldn’t define seething through his body. “That’s it. I’m done with this bullshit!”

  * * *

  Alex wasn’t sure how, but minutes later he was driving through midtown toward KKIS. He didn’t know whether or not he’d be able to get in, but then he hadn’t stopped to think. Period. Alex shook his head as he realized where he was headed and why.

  It had been three weeks since he’d laid eyes on her. Three weeks since he’d kissed her mouth. Three weeks since that night when everything he believed, all his carefully built delusions, had come tumbling down around him in a thunderous heap. He closed his eyes briefly and was brought out of it as the shrill cry of a horn blew in front of him. His eyes flew open in response, and he swerved sharply to avoid the other car. He sucked in his breath.

  Holy shit!

  He was at the complete mercy of his wants, his needs… his goddamned emotions. Steeling his resolve, Alex pressed his foot down on the accelerator, despite the weather, as thoughts of Angel raced through his brain. The first time he’d seen her at Home Depot and then, fatefully, at the karaoke bar in that amazing dre
ss she wore their first night together. The way her mouth felt under his, the incredible passion they shared that last night, and his incredible need to protect her. All of it was stunning and unfamiliar. As foreign as everything else he’d been feeling.

  Blinking his eyes twice and shaking his head to try to clear it, he muttered under his breath. “I am completely losing it.”

  It wasn’t long before he was pulling up outside the radio station. Angel’s newly repaired Lexus was still there, and his eyes flickered over the parking lot. It was well-lit, the new security cameras in several places, but it was still the middle of the night and it left Alex uneasy about her walking to her car alone.

  The doors were locked and the lobby dark. Alex dialed Darian’s number and waited for him to answer.

  “Alex, are you back in Chicago?”

  “Hey, D. Yes. I’m at the station. Can you come down and let me in?”

  “Whoa. Think about what you’re doing, man.” Darian paused. His friend was acting completely out of character. It wasn’t like Alex to run across town for a woman, especially one that wasn’t giving him the time of day. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  “Darian, don’t fucking lecture me. Just... I only want to talk to her.”

  “Call her then. Don’t ambush her. It might do more harm than good.”

  Alex sighed heavily as he leaned up against the white brick beside the glass doors on the front of the building.

  “I have. I did. A few weeks back, she came to me in the middle of the night. I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t. Angel came to me, and now she won’t answer my calls? And, all of the other bullshit with that psycho-bastard? It’s driving me fucking crazy.” His hand raked through his damp hair. “Chris put me through to her tonight. It turned into a confrontation.”

  “Didn’t it start that way, too?” his friend asked knowingly.