“I already told you, Huntsman. Two years.”
“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”
“There isn’t much I don’t know about you.”
Why that sends a fissure of fear down my spine as if she issued a threat, I can’t grasp. Don’t want to. I just know it makes me mean.
Meaner.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you, Eshe. Other people, it’s just a job. But you? I’m going to take my time with it. Find out thespots that make you scream out and make sure I play there the longest with my knife. By the time I finish, you’re going to pray for death, and there won’t no mercy coming. Not from God, and for damn sure not from me.”
She blinks. Blinks again.
“I think I just came,” she whispers.
I surge to my feet, disgust soaring its way through me on crimson-edged wings, and it carries me across the one-room, bottom-floor apartment and out the door into the tiny foyer. Disgust not at her. That would be too easy, too simple.
Nah, it’s all directed at myself.
Because I had to get the fuck up out of there like a goddamn coward before I crawled on that bed, tore the covers back from her lushly curved body, thrust my hand between those thick thighs, and found out for myself if she really had nutted all over my sheets.
After scrubbing my hands over my short sandy curls, I interlock my fingers behind my head, tipping it back to stare at the water-stained ceiling. I can’t even lie. There’s a part of me that wants to charge out the front door onto the cracked and broken lot that the empty, blue multilevel house sits on. Inhale the air that smells of car exhaust, fried meat someone’s cooking for dinner, and the faintest whiff of weed. Shit, I’m desperate for anything that doesn’t carry the scent of cedarwood, musk, and earth as rich and brown as the beautiful tone of her smooth skin.
But I don’t trust her. Even battered, bruised, and with alarms set around my nailed-shut windows, I don’t trust Eshe not to escape. So I’m fucking trapped. As trapped as she is.
Aren’t we two fucking peas in a pod?
Releasing a low growl, I drop my arms, turn on my booted heels, and return to the apartment. Eshe’s no longer lying down but sitting with her back propped up against the back of the pullout couch. As if she’s been waiting on me to reenter, her gaze finds me as soon as the door opens and, like a fishing rod, reels me in, tugging me across the room until I’m back in the chair I abandoned.
Without removing my gaze from her, I reach over, grab the nearly empty pizza box, and toss it onto the bed. She’s the first to break our standoff when she dips her head to the contents and greedily scoops up one of the three slices left. When she moans, her lashes fluttering down as she chews, my entire body tightens until it threatens to snap in half with the slightest nudge. My dick bricks up, volunteering as fucking tribute to be that volatile nudge.
Locking down the vicious curse clawing its way up outta my chest, I insert immediate distance between me and her by returning to the kitchen for a bottle of water. By the time I approach the bed once more, she’s wolfed down one slice and is already biting into the next. I lob that at her, too, and she catches it one-handed without pausing a beat in eating.
“I like what you’re doing with the place,” she says around a mouthful of pizza.
I survey the room as if I don’t know every nail, splinter, and water stain in the apartment. Still, I see it through her eyes. The boards nailed over the bulletproof windows. The peeling wallpaper. The brown water stains dotting the ceiling. Yeah, it’s a pit. And it serves its purpose.
“How long have I been out?” she asks.
“Seventeen hours.”
“Damn.” Her eyebrows wing up. “You cleaned me up and dressed my wounds.”
I don’t answer since she’s stating the obvious.
“And put me in your T-shirt.” Dropping the water to the bedcover, she pinches the shirt and lifts it to her nose, inhaling noisily. “Mmm. Smells just like you, too. Like murder, mayhem, and sex. All my favorites.”
She’s trying to get a rise out of you. Don’t give in. Don’t give in, muthafucka.
“Pizza. I’m not surprised we’re here eating this. It’s your favorite, after all. Doesn’t matter the topping.” She tips the slice to the side, studying it like it’s an unknown species instead of anItalian dish. More surprise undulates through me, but I must do a shit job of concealing it because she shakes her head as if she’s a teacher and I’m her disappointing student. “How many times I have to tell you there isn’t much I don’t know about you?”
She shifts against the back of the couch as if seeking a more comfortable position. Since I don’t sleep more than four hours in a stretch, I don’t have any additional pillows to offer her.
Goddammit. This ain’t the Holiday Inn, and I ain’t hospitality services.
Ignoring the discomfort flashing across her face and the equally fleeting need to ease it, I lean against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest.
“All right. Given name, Malachi James Bowden. Thirty-three years old. Birthday May nineteenth. Shoutout to the Tauruses. One sister: Miriam Tanai Bowden. Died at the age of four. First kill at ten, the foster father who murdered your sister. Second kill, two months later. Mike Flannery, the pimp in Worcester who beat and tried to rape you.”
