It’s as if the walls have closed in on me with wide, screaming mouths, and they’re all coming at me with Liam’s voice.

At the same time, that nude picture of me looms in my sight, and I finally let out a horrified sob, then lurch to the ground to pick up my phone and bag. I run down the hall away from Cage, and there’s a door at the end of it…need to get to it…hope it leads to a place where I’ll never see him again…

I crash through the door into a dim lot, but he’s right there behind me.

“Karini! What the hell is going on?”

He catches up to me then whirls me around to face him. I don’t want to look at his face to see the disgust there, and I keep my head down as I pull away.

But there is no getting away from this. No matter where I run, I’ll always see that picture and I’ll always know how stupid and weak I was before I met Cage.

“Karini,” he says again.

This time there’s something in his tone that forces me to look up at him, even as I cradle my arms over my stomach. I’m gripping my phone and my bag, feeling as if they’re all I have anymore, because everything is about to disappear if Liam does what he’s threatening to do with those photos.

Dox me. Make them go viral all over the Internet.

As Cage stands in front of me with his hands fisted at his sides, his expression stormy and confused, I fight back more sobs.

“That picture…” he starts to say. Then anger completely takes him over. “That message. Who is it from?”

No hiding anymore. Nowhere to go.

“I messed up so badly,” I say.

But it goes beyond that, because now that I think about it—now that Liam seems to have run out of patience and he’s really going to screw me over—this might even affect Cage’s deal with Igor. He’ll question Cage’s judgment in choosing a “girlfriend” if my naked body is plastered everywhere online.

“Oh my god,” I moan, “I really messed up.”

I start to cry, my body shuddering with every sob.

“Karini,” he says again, softer this time, with an emotion that sounds deeper than I’ve ever heard. But crap, I don’t know anything. And I’ve dragged him into my bullshit. I’m a disaster, and I wish he would just go.

Yet he doesn’t, and that makes me even more upset. Everything starts to spill out of me as I keep staring at the ground.

“There was only one guy who was ever serious about me.” My words rattle in the night air. “At least I thought he was serious. But… God, he was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Cage’s anger is back, and I think it’s directed toward Liam. But how long will that last once Cage realizes exactly what I did?

When I don’t answer, he asks, “Karini, who is this asshole?”

I hold my arms over myself tighter. “His name is Liam Phillips. I met him before summer break at a music show in a club. He was…” I shake my head and stay hunched over. “He was older. Almost thirty. Way more experienced. That night, he was near the front of the stage, king of the club. Women were all over him. But then he looked at me, and for some reason, he smiled. Then he walked over, and I…”

I slowly look up at Cage. He’s so tightly wound that I have to take a step back. Is he jealous? Or is there something more happening with him?

“Keep going,” he says in a voice so deceptively calm that it makes me shiver.

“Liam bought me drinks,” I finally say. “I’d never had a guy do that for me before. I was so flattered, and when he came right out and said that he wanted me, I didn’t know what to do at all.”

Cage closes his eyes for an anguished moment, as if he’s picturing how pathetic I was. Or maybe he’s remembering the other night when he told me how gorgeous and desirable I am, and it pains him to know that I’ve never believed that.

And never believing got me into this trouble.

“What else?” he says in that low, dangerous tone. He opens his eyes, and his gaze burns with a terrible fire.

“I’m sure you can guess the rest,” I say.

“Tell me.”

I hold back another sob, but Cage isn’t going to let me get away without telling him. And the thing is, I want to. I have to.

“Liam was obviously real bad news,” I say. “But I didn’t catch on at first. I was too busy marveling at how a hot guy like him could ever find me attractive. He dressed like a stockbroker, but underneath he was wild. I romanticized him, even when I found out that he was a drug addict.”

Cage’s gaze goes full dark.

I add, “I probably don’t have to tell you that he had little to no redeeming moral qualities.”

One of Cage’s hands unfists, but then he clenches it again. “I can’t name many drug addicts who do.”

Something about the way he says it makes him sound angry in a more personal way than I can fathom, but as he keeps drilling me with his gaze, I let the rest of my dumbass story out.

“I didn’t figure everything out all at once. It was gradual, because, at first, Liam was charming and nice. He took me on romantic little trips into the country for picnics. He brought me to a small carnival and won me a stuffed animal, for god’s sake. Then, after a few weeks, he tried to…”

I nearly choke on the words.

“Did he hurt you?” Cage grits.

My pulse wobbles as I stare into his eyes. Sparks flare there, more anger. But is that fury at himself because he let me into his life?

Or does he actually care about me more?

“Liam didn’t hurt me,” I say.

Cage’s shoulders relax, but not by much.

I lick my lips, because they’ve gone dry. “At least, he didn’t hurt me in the way you’re thinking. He did try to have sex with me, and even though I was infatuated with him, I said I wasn’t ready. Because I wasn’t. I think I instinctively knew that things between us weren’t right.”

“And what did he do when you refused?”

“He got really impatient.” I rub my chilled, bare arms, even though the night is warm. “He called me ‘boring’ and a ‘prude,’ and I felt terrible about putting him off. I still hadn’t caught on to what a shit he was. Then he suddenly became very ‘patient’ as he waited for me to come around, and I let him fool me into blaming myself for not sleeping with him. Then I did something really, really dumb.”

I lower my head again, tears really running out of my eyes now. “One night, I allowed him to take some naked pictures of me on his cell phone.”

“Shit, Karini.” Cage sounds disappointed.

“Even though I knew things weren’t right, I wanted to show him that I could be a ‘fun girl,’ and I felt like if I didn’t do something, I’d be just a boring old prudish tease.”

As silence descends, I realize how things have changed in the short time since I left Liam. With Cage, I never felt pressured. Instead of trying to prove something to him, I just…was. Cage brought something out in me. It never had to be forced.

And now all of that is about to come to an end. I can feel it.

I try to hold back those tears, but I can’t. “All in all, it took me a couple of months to finally see Liam’s darker side, and after I discovered his drug addiction, that’s when I broke things off. He was angry, bitter, but it wasn’t until he ran out of money for his drugs soon afterward that his truly evil side came out.”

“And his evil side is doing something with those pictures, isn’t it?” Cage asks.

I nod. “He told me that if I didn’t start giving him money, he was going to put my naked pictures online and send them to porn sites.”

More silence.

A crazy laugh cuts the air, and as it dies, I realize that it’s from me.

“He even has some short video clips of me touching myself,” I whisper.

Cage plows his hand through his hair and paces a few feet away.

I raise my voice. “The only way I can keep Liam from putting that stuff online is by paying him off, but when he made his first threat, I didn’t have the kind of money he was demanding. He didn’t believe me though. He said I needed to go to my parents, who own a nice house, but I couldn’t do that. So I did my best, pulling everything out of my savings, but then he started pushing for even more. I finally got him to agree on the sum that I found out I could earn from selling my virginity to the Highest Bidder. The site had no idea about this situation. Liam doesn’t even know how I’m earning the cash, but I doubt he’d care.”

“Let me guess,” Cage says. “You already gave him your advance from the Highest Bidder.”

“Yes. And he’ll get the final payment after you pay me for the rest of this job. But I made him promise that he won’t ask for any more after that, and he agreed.”

“Did he? Well, you can bet a shit bag like him will keep his word on that.”

His slashing words make me cringe. “I know there are no guarantees that he’ll keep his word, but I have to believe what he said. I don’t have any other recourse.” I stuff the phone into my handbag so forcefully that I drop both items. The thumps on the concrete are deafening, but my devastation is even worse as I stand there and brace my hands over my stomach. “My god, if those pictures and videos end up online and on porn sites, my parents… They’ll be destroyed. I’ll be humiliated. And if they go viral and Igor Vasiliev learns about them…”

Cage turns his back on me. I can’t see his gaze, but I don’t have to because I can feel the demons swirling around him, as if they’ve caught up to him in some way I don’t understand yet.

“Goddammit,” he rages. “You’ve been giving money to a drug addict, Karini. And this whole time, you kept it a secret.”

More tears run out of my eyes. Next he’ll probably say something about how I’ve messed up his life, because this deal with Igor is now in jeopardy. Some “family man” he’ll be with a flasher like me by his side.

“I’m so fucking sick of the lies,” he seethes.

As he slowly turns to face me, I wonder if he’s angrier about the pictures or being lied to. But it doesn’t matter. I’m already taking a step away from him, not because he’s disgusted—it’s because there’s something revealed in his gaze that I never expected to see.

Doubt.

It takes a moment for the realization to tear through me. He doesn’t believe what I’m saying.

But why? What did I do to him so that he doesn’t believe me?

As I keep trying to understand what’s going on, he speaks, his voice back to being so calm that it sends cold trickles down my spine.

“First,” he says, “I’m going to have the limo brought around. You will be going back to my place immediately and wait for me there until I return.”

He doesn’t have to say that there’ll be no “lessons” or escapades tonight. This goes beyond my bringing out the sexual animal in him.

“What about Mr. Vasiliev?” I ask.

Cage is still frigid. “I’ll make up an excuse, say you got sick and went home to rest. But you need to go out front and wait. Now.”

I flinch at that last word, wounded. All my fear and stress crash against me in a big wave, and I’m suddenly sobbing again, fumbling to pick up my phone and bag from the ground, then rushing away from him.

It doesn’t take the limo long to pick me up, and everything is a bruising whirl on the drive to the apartment.

Cage didn’t believe me. That, more than anything, is what I can’t stop thinking about. He isn’t on my side, and that’s what really hurts.

I hurry up the elevator and into his place and then, without thinking, I’m packing my bag.

I just can’t face him again. I don’t want him to call me a liar when I’m not. I just want to go, need to go.

I grab the very first flight I can find out of New York, huddling at the airport with my phone off until I’m finally in the air. I’m running away, hiding, but not from those pictures and videos.

I’m only trying to escape from what I saw in Cage’s eyes this time.