“No need. I just wanted to make it clear between us.” My hand trembles as I reach for my coffee, yet thankfully, he doesn’t appear to notice. “I’ve had some… incidents in the past with people thinking they were too familiar with me, and I guess I have hard boundaries now.”
“Yeah?” His face morphs into a concerned frown.
“Not like that.”But almost.I stow away how Jinx in protector mode makes me feel for later dissection and take a sip of the fucking nuclear brew. “Holy shit.” I set the mug down and lick my lips before running my scorched tongue across my teeth. “That’s damn hot.”
“It’s how she makes it.” He leans forward and takes a whiff of the steam that rises off his. “Gives you time to get hungry before you fill up on coffee so that you’re more likely to order food as well.”
“Crafty.” She’s notoriously hard-edged—Theresa—and was intimidating as all hell back in the day when she hung around his club, but I have to respect the woman for such strategy.
“So,” Jinx says. “There wasn’t anyone significant left behind when you came back home?”
The all-out balls of the man to cut straight to the chase are damn well impressive. “What about you?” I flip the question back at him. “Anyone significant keeping you here?”
He gives a slow smirk, gaze lazy. “Nobody for me. Now you answer.”
“Never had anyone that worked out. No.” I hold his gaze as I lift the coffee for a more modest sip.
“Shame.” He makes no bones about checking me out again, gaze dragging over me with feline arrogance. “Podcast,” he announces.
“Pardon?”
“The online thing you do. What’s the subject? Sexual diseases? What makes it too embarrassing to do here?”
“You really aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
He shakes his head. Just once. But enough to make his tousled hair tickle his sharp jawline. “Nope. I asked you here to get to know you as you are now, Kyra, and that’s a pretty big part of it. You know what I do. It’s written all over me. I want to know why it is you’re so ashamed of your chosen path.”
“I’m not ashamed…” I let the sentence hang, unsure how to finish it. Because I am, aren’t I? Scared of judgment, with strong emotional wounds around others’ perception of my choices—I’m ashamed.
Damn.
“Fine.” If not here and now, then when? When will I ever be completely comfortable in my own skin? I swore when I left that I’d find who I was and honor that, leaving the scared, shy girl behind in the halls of Fox River High. And yet, here I am. Back in town and hiding in the shadows again lest my scandal makes other people feel uncomfortable. “I’ll tell you, but if you so much as change the way you look at me, or use it against me, I will not hesitate to use my last name as a weapon against you.”
Jinx smiles, setting his elbows on the table to lean in. “As fun as that sounds, I promise you’ll get no judgment here.”
His light brown gaze promises warmth and honesty. Yet I’m no fool. I know who he is, what he does, and what that stands for. Deception is all part of how they survive.
But if I can’t tell him what I do—someone who doesn’t give two toots about the legalities—then who can I confide in? Why should I hide? Just because a select portion of society feels it’s immoral enough to create laws against, doesn’t mean I’m a sinner to everyone.
“I run an account through a subscription service. Pay for perks kind of deal.”
He rolls his lips together and draws a measured breath. “A subscription service.”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of perks?”
Fuck’s sake.I still fight the truth. “Ones that aren’t safe for work.”
His pupils dilate, and he leans back, slow and measured, settling his elbows on the arms of the chair.
The temperature in the room soars.
“Can I see it?”
NINE
JINX
