Thirty seconds of thrashing. I feel Kade’s eyes on me, but I don’t look away. I don’t lose focus. He’s seen me do this before. It was his choice to stay and watch me do it again. I simply tighten my grip as Dusty tries to thrash forward. I think he was trying to poke a hole where his mouth is using my daggers. Smart. He’d get air that way. But I yank him back.
I think of every woman whose complaint was folded into a file and shoved in a drawer. I think of the ones who walkedthrough the door of their new apartment with tears in their eyes. I imagine the faces haunted by debt and fear.
I let myself imagine them breathing easier now, and it steadies me.
Another thirty seconds and his thrashing lessens. Forty seconds more and he’s bobbing slightly, the movements slowing.
And then finally, he slumps forward, his forehead cracking against my table. He goes still as a puppet with its strings cut. There is an ugly silence that follows, the kind that has weight and smell and a ridiculous, private holiness. I keep an eye on his back, watching for the rise and fall of breath, which doesn’t come, for a full two minutes before I’m positive he’s dead.
Finally, I let go of the bag. The room smells like copper and incense, an odd liturgy of what has happened before, and what will happen again.
Not-Kade exhales behind me, long and low. I don’t turn to face him, not yet.
“You okay?” he asks.
But I don’t get to answer, because the second he stops speaking, there’s a loud bang on the front door.
Panic snaps like a twig.
The knock slams against the front door again like a gavel, and my heart tries to punch straight through my ribs. For one sharp second, all I can think isthis is it, it’s over, prison orange is my new color.My hands are slick with sweat, blood stains are blooming across the oak table, and the corpse is slumped like a grotesque prop in a crime scene play.
Before I even blink to try and clear my thoughts, not-Kade is moving.
And I don’t understand what the hell is going on.
He strips his shirt off in one motion, kicks his shoes and socks across the room, and deliberately musses his hair like afrat boy stumbling out of the wrong sorority house. His eyes catch mine: calm, sharp, wicked.
“Stay quiet,” he says, and then—because he’s a lunatic—he yanks his jeans half open, like he’s auditioning for a porn parody ofHome Alone.
I stare at him, completely confused and wondering what the hell he’s doing. But he steps out of the room and strides toward the door, where there is an older man looking inside frantically. I close the door to just a crack opening, hiding my crime scene, and stare out at the insanity unfolding.
Kade unlocks the door and pushes it open to a distressed-looking man.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks. “I heard screaming. Was that in here?”
Kade stands there, chest bare for the whole world to see, grin sharp enough to sell the lie before a single word leaves his mouth. “Hey, man,” he says to the guy outside. “This… Damn, this is really embarrassing. Sorry if we scared you. My girlfriend’s a little… enthusiastic.” He gestures vaguely over his shoulder like I’m the kind of girlfriend who’d draw blood in the middle of roleplay.
The man blinks, staring at Kade in confusion for a moment. And then Kade’s lie slides into place. “Ugh. You… In atarotshop?”
Not-Kade’s a damn genius.
His smile is pure devilry. “Don’t knock it ’til you try it. Oracle chic is the new bondage.”
I nearly choke holding back a laugh, my hand slapped over my mouth as the man’s face cycles through horror, pity, andwhatever, not my circus.He mutters something about “keeping it down” and shuffles off into the night.
Not-Kade closes the door with a soft click. Turns. Smirks like the bastard knows he just won an Oscar for Best Improvised Cover Up.
The panic hasn’t even cleared my bloodstream before I’m laughing, sharp and helpless. My body shakes with it, part hysteria, part relief, partwhat the actual hell just happened.
“What would you do without me?” he says again, smug and gleaming, every inch of him unbothered by the corpse cooling ten feet away.
“Probably not be standing here with blood on my table and a neighbor convinced I make you scream during kinky tarot sex,” I fire back with an unhinged grin.
He’s ridiculous. Half-naked, hair wild, chest rising like he just wrestled a bear and won—and hedid it for me.For my safety. For my secret. For my messy, murderous world.
The laughter dies in my throat, replaced by heat curling low in my stomach. I cross the room in two strides, grab him by the belt loops, and yank him toward me. Our mouths collide, wild and messy, teeth clashing like we’re trying to eat each other alive.
There’s blood in the air, copper and heavy, and his skin tastes like salt and sin. His hands snap to my waist, fingers digging in like he’s afraid I’ll vanish, and suddenly it doesn’t matter that Dusty’s body is slumped on the other side of the wall. It doesn’t matter that the table is slick with dark stains. It doesn’t matter that I am terrible and dangerous and broken.
