The room was dark. Almost pitch black, even though it was daytime. The lone window in the little room had been covered by blinds and by what had to be the thickest, roughest curtains she’d even touched in her life. They’d felt more like cardboard than fabric.
She was supposed to be sleeping. Cass had given that order in his gruff-as-hell voice. And then he’d…
Spread out on the floor.
The floor, not the bed.
She’d told him that she wanted to kill a man. Potentially, two men, and he’d responded by telling her to get her ass to sleep. She’d closed the cardboard curtains because she could not sleep with any light streaming at her, and he’d hunkered down on the floor. The floor.
The bed was bad, but the floor had to be a million times worse. “There’s room up here,” she mumbled into the silence that had stretched and stretched.
He didn’t speak.
She rolled onto her side. Inch-wormed her way to the edge of the bed so she could try peering down at him. “Did you hear me?”
Nothing.
She reached out her hand and poked at him. Her poking finger touched what felt like his shoulder. “There is room up here with me. You can sleep in the bed.” She waited a beat. “With me.” Duh, Agnes. It’s obvious you meant he could sleep in the bed with you.
But he didn’t respond.
She poked him again. “Cass?”
A long sigh.
Her lashes fluttered. “Were you sleeping?” No way. Not on the floor. Not so quickly. Not when the adrenaline from the night’s events had to be quaking through his veins. It was certainly quaking through her veins. She tipped a little closer to the edge of the bed.
He was on the floor, between her and the door. The bed was shoved up against the wall with the window.
“If I was sleeping,” came his rasping response, “then I am certainly not sleeping any longer, am I? Because you keep poking at me. Literally, poking me.”
Yes, guilty. “I’m not a murderer.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You mean you don’t just want me to help you kill for shits and giggles?”
Ah, there it was. She’d seen the anger flash in his eyes when she’d made her little confession earlier. That had been right before he told her to get her ass in bed and sleep.
“You fucked me because you wanted me to do your dirty work for you.” Anger definitely burned in every single word from Cass. Maybe not just anger. Maybe he was skating toward rage. “I don’t like being used, Agnes.”
“Pretty sure most people don’t like being used. Not like it’s one of my favorite things.” She sucked in a breath. “I fucked you because I wanted you.”
“Liar.” Almost a caress. If angry accusations of lying could be considered a caress. Oddly enough, from him, that was exactly what the single word had sounded like. A tender caress. An endearment, an?—
Agnes shut off the thought. “You think I faked my response to you? Granted, I do have some fair acting talent, I thought that was on display during my dramatic performance at The Bottomless Pit. But I did not fake being turned on with you. And I certainly didn’t fake all of those orgasms.” Now she was getting angry, too. “I hadn’t been with anyone since Max died. You are the first person who made me yearn. Who made me want to let go and be with a lover again. So don’t think I faked anything. After years of not feeling anything at all, my body basically erupted for you. No faking involved. Just feeling so much that I couldn’t control myself.” She snatched back her poking finger. The better to grip the side of the bed.
“Who. The fuck. Is. Max?”
She blinked in the darkness. “He was my boyfriend. He, um, we were high school sweethearts.” His image flashed in her mind. His curly hair. The dimples that appeared when he smiled, and Max had always been smiling. Everyone had loved him. He’d been so kind and easy going. He’d made the world a better place by being in it and then…
Then he hadn’t been in it. He’d been gone. She’d been in the hospital bed, crying for him.
“We went to college together,” she continued. She’d moved her body so that she clung to the edge of the bed. She was about to practically fall on Cass. Why am I trying to get so close to him? Her fingers dug into the mattress. “Austin, Texas,” she whispered. “That’s where we were from. That’s where we planned to raise our future family one day.” They’d had so many dreams. “And that’s where, one summer night, when we were coming home late from a party…” Right after Max proposed and slid a ring on my finger. “It was where we were attacked. The man on the motorcycle circled around us. Over and over again. Riding a big, black bike. The engine howling and growling. A black helmet and visor covered his head and face. He jumped off the bike and came slashing at us with his knife.”
“Fuck.”
