Caged by His Twisted Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Locked Door

A rooftop escape ends in a bitten kiss, and Declan's men are at Kieran's shop.

His house stood on a steep street in Beacon Hill, four stories of dark brick with a black door and no number on it.

The driver pulled up at the curb, and the man in the dark coat got out first and looked up and down the street.

Ronan opened my door himself.

He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the street door, and then he locked it again behind us.

The bolt shot home with a heavy sound.

"The lock takes my key or my thumb," he said. "Nothing else."

"Cute," I said. "A cage with a doorbell."

"There's no doorbell."

He walked me up three flights of stairs, past a landing where another man in a dark coat sat on a chair with a paperback.

The man nodded at Ronan and did not look at me.

At the top of the house, Ronan opened a door onto a bedroom with a big white bed and a window over the rooftops.

Someone had put a toothbrush on the dresser, still in its box, and a pair of gray pajamas folded on the pillow.

They were in my size.

I turned around slowly.

"You knew I'd say yes."

"I knew you'd say yes if I asked right."

"You didn't ask. You blocked a door."

"I asked at the end," he said. "You signed."

He stood in the doorway, and I realized he wasn't coming in.

He was leaving the room to me.

"Breakfast is at seven," he said. "Good night, Neve."

He shut the door, and I heard the lock turn from outside.

I stood in the middle of the room and counted to sixty.

Then I went to the window.

It was an old sash with a brass latch, and the latch gave on the second try.

Cold air and rain came in together.

Outside the sill ran a stone ledge a foot wide.

Beyond it, the roof of the next house sloped up to a chimney.

It was three stories down to the street.

I had carried trays across wet kitchen floors for six years, and I had a body that did what I asked.

I climbed out.

The slate was slick under my work shoes and the wind pushed at my back.

I got one hand on the chimney, then the other.

Across the next roof was an iron fire escape, rusted and wet and wonderful.

I got a foot on it.

"Don't," said Ronan.

He was sitting on the chimney brick above me with my coat over one arm, in shirtsleeves, in the rain.

I had not heard him come.

I did not see how he had come.

"There's a roof hatch on the fourth floor," he said. "I wondered how long you would take."

"You locked me in."

"I locked the door. I left the window."

I stared at him.

"You wanted me to try."

"I wanted to know what you'd do."

He stepped down off the brick, and the slate didn't bother him at all.

"You went out a window in the rain in work shoes. That's useful to know."

"Useful for what?"

"For Sunday."

He held out my coat.

I did not take it.

Water ran down my face and into my collar.

My pulse beat in my throat, and I was angrier than I had been in three years.

"You don't get to look at me like that," I said.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm something you found and kept."

He put the coat on my shoulders, slowly, one sleeve at a time.

His hands stayed on the collar after.

"You're the only person who ever put me in the water," he said. "I've had three years to wonder what you were."

I hit him.

Not hard, open-handed across the jaw, and my palm stung.

He did not step back.

His eyes went darker.

He took hold of the front of the coat and pulled me against him, and I knew what was coming and let it.

He kissed me.

I bit his lip.

He made a low sound in his chest and held me harder.

My hands went into his wet hair, and for a few seconds there was no rooftop and no rain.

When he lifted his head, there was blood on his mouth.

"That's for the pier," I said.

He almost smiled.

My phone rang in my coat pocket.

It was Kieran, and I never got calls from Kieran at one in the morning.

"Neve," my brother said, too fast, "Declan's guys are at the shop. They won't leave."

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