Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1) by Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley

“She was a baby.”
    His words broke at the end, and my heart ached to tell him everything would be okay.
    “Abram, I—”
    “Stop,” he said, his voice sharp enough to silence me. “You didn’t kill her, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t facilitate the tragedy. Make no mistake, that girl is dead because of your actions.”
    If I could have seen my own face, it would have no doubt been a trip. What the hell was he talking about?
    “
My
actions?” I balked. “I didn’t do anything.”
    “Precisely.” He growled, turning to me, his arms crossing across his massive chest. God, why was I always looking at his chest? I forced my attention up to his face as he continued. “The upstairs was supposed to be closed off, Ms. Bellamy. No one—
no one
—was supposed to be up there! I made that explicitly clear to you many times!”
    He was closer to me now, his mammoth chest heaving in huge, infuriated breathes. His teeth ground together, his lips curled back, and there was a fire in his eyes that would have scared me if it didn’t intrigue me so much.
    “So how did it happen, Ms. Bellamy? How did that poor girl end up in a place inside
my
club that
you
ensured me no one would enter?”
    Maybe I should have been afraid. Maybe I should have been repentant. He had, after all, made it crystal clear to me that upstairs was off limits to everyonebut me, employees included.
    But I wasn’t repentant, and I sure as hell wasn’t afraid. I was angry, I was outraged, and what was more, I was right.
    “She fell through the
roof
, Abram,” I said. “Not over the balcony.”
    A vein pulsed along his temple. “You can’t
get
to the roof without access through the second floor,” he said through gritted teeth. “So I ask you again—How. Did. This. Happen?
    “You know what?” I jabbed his chest with my index finger. His pecswere firm and unyielding, which I probably would have paid more attention to if I wasn’t enraged. “None of this would have happened if
you
”—I poked him again for good measure—“would have done
your
job!”
    His dark eyes widened, but I didn’t let him respond. I had too much to say. “That’s right, you
arrogant asshole
.” Jab, jab, jab. The last poke of his chest hurt one of the knuckles in my pointer finger, so I finally dropped my hand away. “If you would have actually taken the time to be where you were supposed to be instead of laying it all on my lap, then maybe things would have turned out differently.”
    “Don’t you dare,” he said. He stepped so close to me that our chests pressed together. His head had to crane down to look at me, and I think I trembled a little then, but not out of fear. “I’m not the one who allowed a murderer through the front door.”
    Abram was a big guy, even compared to a tall, curvy girl like myself. But I swallowed the lump in my throat and steeled my gaze up at him. “And what the hell was I supposed to do about that?”
    “What I hired you to do!” he said. “You told me you could do this. You sold yourself as some street savvy siren who knew everything there was to know about running a nightclub. Where’s that woman, Ms. Bellamy? Because, from where I’m standing, all I see is some blubbering little girl making excuses!”
    Before I could stop myself, my arm reared back. My hand flew toward him, ready to smack him in his smug, gorgeous face.
    Instead of me hitting him, however, he grabbed my arm with his hand and held it steady in the air, staring at me with fierce eyes and flared nostrils. He was so close to me, his chest heaving against mine, that his breath mingled with my own. I sensed he was angry enough to want to do
something
, but I didn’t know what. He was a brute, but he wasn’t the type to hurt a woman.
    He
was
the type to not completely control his temper, though.
    “Maybe I should find a new place to work,” I said breathlessly, his hand still cupping my arm.
    “Maybe you should,” he answered, his tone firmer