Tormenting Lila Read Free Page A

your thing?’ he asked, reaching over and pulling me towards him.
    Freshly-showered I pulled on my green dress and turned my back to Alex. ‘Do me up?’ I asked.
    Alex crossed the room in one stride and stood behind me in front of the mirror. I smiled at him as he lifted my hair – growing out now, almost to my shoulders and bleached white in places
from the sun – and did the buttons up on the dress. He stooped and kissed the back of my neck and I shuddered as his hands slid slowly down to my hips.
    I laced my fingers through his, feeling light-headed and suddenly nervous. Maybe Suki had been right – maybe this dress
would
be the key that unlocked the bunker, so to speak.
Alex gripped my waist and spun me around, his lips finding mine instantly. He kissed me softly at first, but after a few seconds my pulse was flying and his kisses became harder. His hands moved to
cup my face, to draw me nearer even as I edged us backwards towards the bed. Alex lifted me and lay me down, pressing me into the mattress, resting his weight on his arms. Maybe we wouldn’t
be waiting until I was eighteen after all. Hell, I thought, if I’d known the green dress was the key all along I would have worn it every day, whatever the weather, never mind the occasion. I
didn’t even care if Nate was in the room watching us right now. Thoughts were becoming incoherent, my brain disintegrating as thousands of pleasure signals tangled up my synapses.
    Alex’s fingers were wrestling with the buttons on my dress and I was fumbling with his T-shirt, trying to tug it over his head when there was a loud thud on the door. At first I thought it
was my heart, which was drumming loud enough in my ears to deafen me, but then came another thud, and the door rattled on its hinges.
    We both sat bolt upright on the bed.
    ‘Did you order room service?’ Alex asked, pulling away from me.
    ‘No.’
    Another knock shook the door frame. Alex jumped off the bed, grabbed his gun from the dressing table and stepped between me and the door. A surge of adrenaline flooded my system and I started
scanning the room for objects I could hurl before the synapses in my brain untangled themselves and reason kicked in, telling me to relax. There was no more Unit. We were safe. It was probably just
the bell boy.
    Two months ago Alex and I had been on the run, barely sleeping, living out of a bag, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of the Unit and, although I had thought I’d dealt with it,
clearly the memories weren’t too far beneath the surface, because a knock at the door was all it took to pitch me right back into fight
and
flight mode.
    Another bang. My eyes settled on the minibar sitting squatly beneath the writing desk on the other side of the room.
    At the same time, Alex was edging towards the door. He glanced through the spy hole, and I watched his shoulders sink. Holstering his gun, he drew a deep breath and before I could ask him who it
was, he had yanked open the door. It took me a second to process that it wasn’t the bell boy standing in the hallway. In the next second, the minibar was hurtling across the room, the lead
snapping out of the wall and tearing after it like a comet’s tail.
    Alex let out a yell and I brought the minibar to a flying halt an inch from Jack’s nose, the cacophony of bottles and cans smashing into each other as they bounced around inside having
drowned out Alex’s warning yell.
    ‘Good to see you too, sis,’ my brother said, ducking and grinning up at me from beneath the levitating mini-bar.
    ‘If you’re not careful, this mini bar is the last thing you’ll ever see,’ I growled in answer.
    ‘Bring it on. The white goods are no match for me.’
    I clamped my lips together and with as much dignity as I could muster sent the minibar gliding back into place beneath the desk, making a mental note not to open any of the cans inside it any
time soon. I turned back and glared at Jack who was still standing