He hurriedly scrawled down some numbers and gave me instructions for how to disarm the alarm. I took his keys and marched toward the door, barely managing to keep the epithets unspoken.
“Oh, and Weiss—” he called out, catching me right before I exited. I spun around and waited for the other shoe to drop. “Get me another cup of coffee on the way in, too.”
I couldn’t trust myself to reply, so I clenched my fists at my side and turned, furious that he’d blamed me for this.
Reminding myself to take deep breaths and push fantasies of violent murder out of my mind, I raced out of the building and through the parking lot to my car.
I floored it all the way to his house, risking traffic violations to get there as quickly as I could. It felt weird letting myself into his place. However, being there brought to mind that night I’d been held captive a few weeks before. That night he’d kissed me—and more—on his couch…
Ignoring the lightning strikes of fresh pleasure at those remembered touches, I swallowed and went about my business. I bolted up the stairs, out of breath by the time I got to his room. In a panic, I went to his closet, threw open the doors and quickly selected a white shirt—that part was easy. Then I located the hangers that held ties, pulling them off the rack and laying them carefully on the bed. I had to think this through clearly and not grab just any tie, or he’d rip me a new asshole. Should I get a light brown one or a green one to match the color of his eyes? Were they actually green or brown? Or maybe brown with green and gold flecks. Or green with brown flecks.
Sometimes when I looked at them, they looked like two miniature globes as seen from space—all blue and green and brown… They were as beautiful as the rest of him.
I shook my head—earth to Weiss, indeed—deciding instead to match the tie with the suit. Turning back to the closet, I took in the line-up: some dark brown, some lighter, some in practically every shade of gray. There were even some black ones, which I judged would be too severe with his coloring. His hair was too light a shade of brown to look good with a black suit.
I pondered over it far too long, imagining him carrying on that phone conference in his skivvies, checking his watch and fuming.
I sifted through his entire wardrobe, even the stuff it was clear he hadn’t worn in a while. I was about to select a nice coffee-brown suit, which would look great with a dark red tie, when my hand landed on some shiny spandex material.
I jerked back in surprise. Did he have a Superman suit in there or something? Or maybe some crazy role-playing outfit for when he had his models over for orgies. I had to admit that curiosity got the best of me, so I yanked the thing out by the hanger to look it over.
And promptly dropped it on the floor in shock. I’d seen that costume before. Stretched across the broad shoulders and solid form of Falco the Bounty Hunter.
What. The. Fuck?
I frantically pushed clothes aside in the closet to get a look at what was on the shelves, and there it was—shoved in the corner. Falco’s helmet. The infamous helmet.
Stumbling, I fell back against the bed, not even caring that I was now wrinkling his clothes. That costume was not merchandised. It wasn’t something you could go down to the corner drugstore to buy for Halloween or click a button to order off Amazon. It was custom made specifically for cosplay. And I’d only seen one Falco at Comic-Con. My Falco.
Jordan had attended Comic-Con, too. I’d seen him often enough at the bar of the hotel we’d stayed at with a swarm of women around him, living it up like a playboy. But the day of the costume party, I had no idea what he’d worn.
Apparently, it was a Falco costume.
But no. This must have been an old costume, probably from the year before or from the Draco company convention the previous November? He’d loaned it out to a friend, surely. The friend who I’d…
But if that were the case, if Jordan had ever been seen in the Falco costume, then people would know that he was the owner of the now infamous ensemble as seen in the unintentional geek porn video.
My head hurt and throbbed with the possibilities.
Because the only one that made sense was that Jordan had worn the costume to Comic-Con for the first and only time, and had done so completely unbeknownst to any other employees there. It was common—even famous actors and other geek celebrities got away with wandering through Comic-Con unrecognizable beneath a mask. Or helmet.
The only explanation that made sense was that Jordan and Falco were one and the same. And all this time…he’d let me believe…
Things were clicking into place now. The real reason he hadn’t fired me wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart; it was to keep an eye on me, to ensure I wouldn’t put two and two together and expose him. And, oh God—that comment I’d made about it being the best sex of my life—he’d really seemed to enjoy that. I’d been stroking his ginormous ego every time the subject came up.