You know why.
Yes, I did know why. Fucking Tyler Warden. To be fair, the disaster of that relationship was mostly my fault. I’d believed him and his lies. I should have known better. After all, wasn’t that what all that training with Roz was for? So I’d be able to spot people like him? The pretenders?
But this was different. Marcus Black was different. Just a normal guy. A video game designer who liked holding my hand and wanted me to keep kicking his ass at bowling. I could do this.
And besides, he made me feel alive. Really alive, not that sort of adrenaline-numbed feeling like when I was on a mission. He made me want to laugh properly and do silly things. Was this that balance everyone kept speaking of?
Must be.
As we approached my building, I tried to extricate my hand, but he held on. “What, embarrassed to be seen with me?”
I started to laugh. “Oh God, it’s not that. I can see the girls running out now to ogle you. You’re very handsome, but I think you know that already.”
He just gave me a lopsided grin, a flash of white teeth, his stubble making him look even sexier. It wasn’t fair. “I’d like to meet your work friends, but maybe after we go on a couple dates first. In case they’re crazy.”
I laughed. “My best friend Addie, she is crazy. But no, I’m not embarrassed, I promise. It’s just… We’re not dating.”
“Yes, we are. We’re even holding hands, look.” He held our intertwined hands up when I shook my head.
“God, you’re so annoying—”
“Lyra?”
I whipped around, my hand still intertwined with Marcus’s. And my stomach dropped. I dropped his hand immediately and swallowed hard. “Tyler. What, um… What are you doing here?”
His gaze flickered from me to Marcus, narrowed slightly, and then settled back onto my hand that had just been intertwined with Marcus’s. “Well, I guess Roz didn’t tell you. Given the shift with the new clients, I’ve been transferred here indefinitely.”
At that dropped bomb, my stomach snapped back into place, but this time it tossed and splashed bile, which crawled up my throat begging to be expelled. I swallowed again, trying to keep it all down, push it down like my feelings about this whole fucked-up situation. Why would Roz not tell me?
“Oh. I wasn’t aware. It’s busy season, you know, with all the award shows coming up.”
He grinned. “Yeah. You know I love nothing more than giving a starlet what she wants.”
“Right, starlets, of course. Well, we won’t keep you.”
I thought Tyler would just go away so I could gather myself. Think, breathe, get my thoughts together for just a minute. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. He normally worked out of London since he’d been transferred after our fake relationship. We hadn’t even had an op together, which made sense because he was normally assigned as an undercover Valentine agent. His specialty was to get women to fall in love with him. That was his job. And then he got them to betray the men that they claimed to love.
But instead of opening the massive glass door and stepping inside, he turned to Marcus. “We haven’t met. Are you new here?”
Marcus watched him with narrowed eyes and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “No. I was just walking Lyra to work.”
Tyler’s brows lifted. “Oh. Well, that’s nice of you. Is that your job or something?”
Marcus didn’t take the bait. Instead, he wrapped an arm around my waist, leaned down, and said, “I’ll see you back at the flat.”
I noticed what he did there. That one line made it sound like we lived together.
I opened my mouth to correct him but noticed Tyler had adopted that same crossed-arm look. “Oh, so you’re what, together? Oh, Lyra, look at you, slumming it.”
My eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
Tyler gave him an equal smirk. “Oh, right. Sorry. We used to date.”
Marcus just laughed smoothly. “Yeah, I gathered. Well, mate, wish I could say it was good to meet you, but I’d like to kiss my girlfriend now.”
Girlfriend. He just called me his… Oh God. I turned to stare at him, and he was giving me a look. I knew what that look meant, and I just went with it. He leaned in and brushed his lips over mine, and God, he tasted like mint and sin and sex, and he was doing me a favor.
When I parted my lips, he deepened the kiss just enough to make me want more. One sweep of his tongue to make me a promise. To make me ache. And then he pulled back. “Have a great day at work, Lyra. I’ll see you back at home, yeah?”
I was left just staring after him, my lips still tingling, my body thrumming. What just happened?
Tyler’s gaze flickered over me. “Well, will wonders never cease? You’re not the young ingenue anymore, are you? Now you look like a woman who actually knows what she’s doing. I can’t help feeling a little proud.”
I glared at him. “You had nothing to do with it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
I turned my back on him, not waiting for him to open the heavy glass doors for me. I marched with purpose through our lobby and punched my PIN code at the inner entrance to log in to the system. The doors opened and I was free. I knew that Tyler was going to have to type his own code in, so I only had seconds to escape. Instead of waiting for the elevator, I took the stairs as quickly as I could.
And tried to tell myself I wasn’t running from him.
Lyra
My heart pounding, my nerves shot, I tried for steadying breaths as I headed straight for Roz’s office. But she wasn’t in there.
Most of the agents were at their stations in the main bank of desks and cubicles. There were several meetings going on
