Everything That He Craves (#2) (An Alpha Billionaire BDSM Romance)
Page 4
How long had she been asleep for?
She hadn’t intended to drift off, but that must have been what had happened. She had only meant to shut her eyes. She was surprised that Hunter hadn’t roused her. Instead, he had disappeared. What did that mean? Did he think she was a selfish lover who only cared about her own satisfaction? Callie grimaced at the thought.
She didn’t actually know if she was a selfish lover. But she liked to think she’d be generous and considerate...even with a man as abrasive and infuriating as Hunter Black.
Callie wrapped herself in a sheet and left the playroom in search of Hunter.
If the mansion was a maze in the daylight, it was an impossibly complex puzzle by night. The darkness was misleading and unforgiving. Callie wandered the halls in search of Hunter, but there was no sign of him anywhere. She tried to pay attention to where she was going, but before long she became rather lost.
That was how she stumbled upon the room.
It was innocent enough – she wasn’t intending to snoop as she had when she’d discovered Hunter’s play room. And she’d never imagined he would be hiding something as grotesque and unfathomable as what she found in that second room.
She opened a nondescript door and found herself standing in a second, smaller office. She had never been in there before. If she had, she would have easily remembered. The decor wasn’t exactly forgettable. Taped to the wall were countless old newspaper clippings with headlines.
Callie took a step inside and turned on the light so she could get a better look. She immediately saw that the newspaper headlines contained words such as murder, stabbing and killer. It was completely bizarre and rather jarring to see.
Her mind raced as she tried to make sense of it.
“Of course!” she whispered aloud, deeply relieved when she stumbled upon the answer.
Hunter Black was a famous crime novelist. He wrote about murder for a living – or at least he had before he abruptly quit publishing in that genre. It made sense that he would clip news headlines about that kind of subject matter.
Sure, it was kind of morbid, but Callie supposed it served as inspiration for him. It made sense.
Gathering her sheet around her body, she shut off the light and exited the room, ready to resume her search for Hunter. But he found her first.
“Callie!” he called from the end of the hallway as he rounded the corner. His tone was gruff and had a strange air of urgency to it. He strode toward her quickly, closing the gap between them before she knew it.
“Hi! I’m sorry I fell asleep,” she said sheepishly.
“What? Oh. That’s fine,” he said, sounding distracted. “What are you doing down here?”
“Looking for you,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to cut our play session short,” she added shyly.
Hunter acted as though he hadn’t even heard the last part of what Callie had said. Instead he looked past her, right at the door leading to the room with all the newspaper clippings on the walls. Then he turned his attention back to her. “You didn’t do any more snooping, did you?”
Callie got the impression that Hunter was trying to play his comment off as nothing more than playful teasing, as though he was giving her a hard time for discovering his play room. But she saw the way his eyes were darting around nervously. He wasn’t teasing. There was nothing playful about his question.
Alarm bells sounded in her head and for some reason, she found herself reluctant to answer the question honestly. She got the impression that Hunter wouldn’t react well to the truth.
“I just woke up,” she told him, evading his question.
She saw relief written all over Hunter’s handsome face. And when he grabbed her arm and steered her away from the office door, Callie had far more questions than answers. So she decided to try to do a bit of gentle investigating.
“Why are you so scared of me looking around?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light and unassuming. “I mean, I already found your sex room! There can’t be something more scandalous than that, can there?”
“Of course not,” Hunter replied a bit too quickly.
“Will you give me a tour?” she asked. “I bet I haven’t even been into a third of the rooms.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Hunter said sharply.
Callie blinked. “Why?”
“There are uh...antiques,” he told her, sounding as though he was completely fabricating that excuse. “I have a collection of rare antiques and some of them are priceless. I don’t want any of them broken or damaged.”
“Antique what?” Callie asked.
“Huh?”
“What sorts of antiques do you have? Furniture...? Art...? Something else...?”
“Uh...yes. All of the above,” he told her hastily. “I have eclectic tastes.”
“Funny, I haven’t seen any antiques here. Everything is so modern.”
“I don’t keep them throughout the house,” Hunter explained quickly, sounding completely flustered and at a loss for words. “They’re only in that one wing.” He suddenly seemed to be far too interested in fiddling with his wristwatch.
“You have an antique wing of the house?” Callie asked him, a knot in the pit of her stomach.
“Yes,” he nodded, avoiding eye contact. “So let’s just avoid that wing all together, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, a feeling of dread coming over her. She hadn’t seen a single antique anywhere in that wing. And furthermore, Hunter’s halting pattern of speech and jittery body language were huge red flags.
He was lying. Of that, Callie was certain.
What she didn’t know was why. Surely he wasn’t just embarrassed by his weird collection of macabre newspaper clippings. He already knew Callie wasn’t the type to be easily scared off – after all, she had stuck around even after discovering his little obsession with her.
No, embarrassment wasn’t a likely explanation. So what could it be, then? Why was Hunter so determined to keep her out of that wing of the mansion, and why had he been staring at the office door as though a roomful of ghosts were behind it?
Callie had no idea, but right then and there, she made it her mission to find out.
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