In the early morning, light was starting to creep through the window. The curtains were pulled shut but not completely. A small crack allowed the light through. It wasn’t a lot. It was still too early in the morning, but it was enough where I could see his arm tattoos. His arm was full of them. The arm that had been resting on my own arm was lying on the bed now between us.

I moved a little bit as I made a mental note to ask him about the meanings behind his tattoos, each and every one of them. A tribal tattoo merged with a wolf. A gun was pointed toward his hand.

Kian wouldn’t have those tattoos unless they meant something deeper, and one day—My eyes jerked to his lips. I was suddenly hungry to hear their meanings. I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to understand everything about him. But first, I started edging off the bed. I had a friend whom I hoped would still be my friend.

A hand caught mine right before I slipped from the bed. I glanced back.

Kian’s eyes were open, and he was watching me. A small grin lifted his lip as he asked, “Where are you going?”

Oh, boy. Even right there—with how he was watching me, all dark and deadly—that ache that was only for him was acting up again.

I cleared my throat, cooling my loins, and grabbed the bedsheet that had been kicked into a ball at the bottom of the bed. I wrapped it around me, making sure my girls were nice and tight, before I stood. “Uh…”

I needed a lie.

I saw my phone was flashing from a text. After grabbing it, I read it out loud, “Everything is out of your apartment. Call me for storage information. Your key was slipped underneath the hotel door. Snark.”

“That went off without a hitch.” Kian sat up. His flat stomach bending seamlessly, his muscles gliding underneath his skin.

I averted my eyes. “Yeah.” That wasn’t helping my getaway at all.

“Where were you going to go when I woke up? Tell the truth,” he said.

I looked back at him and saw the knowing look from him. “I have to go make things right with Erica.” I needed to know if she hated me or if I could trust her. I couldn’t turn my back on her until I knew for sure. “We’ve been friends for the past two years. I have to try.”

His eyebrow lifted as his hand rubbed at his jaw. “Now?” He started to get up and glanced at the clock.

It was 5:24 in the morning.

My head bobbed up and down. “Yep. No time like the present.”

His grin went up a notch. “You want to get there before my team arrives?”

“Yeah.” I nodded again.

He stood and reached for his jeans. “Okay. Hold on. I’m coming with you.” He disappeared into the bathroom but popped his head back out a second later. His eyes pinned me down. “Do not leave. I mean it.”

I’d intended to, but I shrugged, looking away. “Yeah, no problem. Of course.”

He went back into the bathroom, and his voice called out, over the sound of running water, “I mean it. Everyone’s out there. They know your face. They’re going to be looking for you. I can maneuver around people. I can get you to your roommate without them knowing.”

Fuck.

His words brought the real world back to me. It fell at my feet with a resounding boom. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding the bedsheet even tighter, while thinking of the media storm that would be camped out in front of my apartment building.

“You were kinda stalkerish, hanging out in the shadows before. How did you get to my building’s roof?”

He came back out a moment later, his jeans on and his hair was slightly wet, like he’d wrung his hands through it a few times. Flicking a hand through the strands, he let them dry in a mess, even though I had to admit it was a sexy mess.

Going to the closet, he said over his shoulder, “Through the main door.”

My eyes went down his back, watching his muscles shifting, as he turned the light on and reached for a shirt. Yep, my hormones were not listening to me. He came back out with a black shirt and pulled it on. As the material fell against his body, I saw it was a perfect fit. He reached inside the closet again and pulled out a few more pieces of clothing.

He placed them onto the bed. “You’re going to have to blend like I do.”

My loins were all about blending. “Huh?”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t have any parlor tricks. It’s still a little dark, so that means we can dress in dark clothing. Put the white shirt on underneath the sweatshirt. You can pull off the sweatshirt if it’s light outside when we leave.”

Going to a dresser, he pulled out a white baseball cap and a dark one. He held up the black one. “You wear this underneath your hood and pull both of them down. When we leave”—he held up the white cap—“you put this one on. And shades. You always have to wear sunglasses.”

“We’ll still get recognized.”

He shook his head, a slow grin tugging at the corners of those dangerous lips. “Trust me.”

I did, and that was how I found myself in the passenger seat of a black sedan, wearing a press badge and watching an entire army of media camped out across the street from my building. If we ran inside, they’d see us. We were screwed.

“How are we getting in there?”

Kian pulled out his phone and started typing on it. “The press are people, just like you and me, but when they have to work, they’re not paying attention. So”—he held up his phone—“we’re going to give them something to report.” As he said that, his thumb hit the Send button on his phone. “Now, we sit and wait.”

It’d already been thirty minutes. And we continued to wait again.

“Kian.” What had he done?

Then, I saw it. A pizza delivery car pulled around the block and headed for the media. I frowned, thinking he would go to my building, but he didn’t. He parked right in front of the closest media teams and started walking to them. Kian’s phone buzzed, and at the same time, a frenzy came over them. Cameras that had been pointing at my building were whipped around. Reporters took their places in front of them, studying their phones for a moment. And in the midst of it, a second, a third, and then a fourth food delivery car descended before the media. All of the drivers were walking around, delivering food to surprised media crew.

Whatever happened, I knew Kian had something to do with it. For one second, we got an opening.