Noble let out a sad little sound that lanced a pang deep in my chest. “Did you get hurt at work?”
I glanced down at the deep gash on my forearm where his gaze was fixed. I hadn’t bothered doing anything with it because whatever my inhabitation did to my host made his body less likely to get infected. For a moment, a brief flash of a fight with the barista I liked—Felix—washed across my vision before it vanished. I hadn’t remembered how the wound happened before Noble asked the question. I cleared my throat.
“Oh, yeah, some drunk got me. I helped the boys in the Cranberry neighborhood roll him into their car.”
Noble ran his thumb gently across my arm near the wound, and I sucked in a breath.
“Sorry. It looks like it hurts,” he murmured and scrunched his face.
“It’s nowhere near as exciting to look at as your bruised-up neck.” Sick pleasure squirmed in my gut as he tipped his head back when I bent down to get a good eyeful. The bruises around his Adam’s apple were so purple they were nearly the color of a plum.
Noble groaned and shook his head as he straightened up. “The lady who works at the domestic abuse shelter we sometimes send people to? The ones who have children? She was at Healing Hearts today, and she gave me three different fliers and made sure to look me directly in the eye as she told me the shelter wasn’t only for women.”
I laughed loud enough that people nearby turned to look, and he covered his eyes with his hand.
After that I dug into my food. I wasn’t normally one for much talk while I was shoving my face full. At heart I was a hedonist in every way, and completely enjoyed the physicalities of my host, including his taste buds. When I finally glanced up while I was licking my fingers clean, Noble was nibbling on his sandwich and hadn’t eaten even a quarter of it. He watched me with wide eyes. I shrugged apologetically.
“So,” he said, setting down his sandwich. He grabbed one of the cloth napkins, laid it on the table, and carefully wiped his hand clean. “You’re a cop. And what else should I know about you?”
“I fuck like a champion.”
Noble grimaced.
“I’m not used to trying to impress people?” I said with a shrug and leaned back in my chair, lacing my fingers together behind my head. Nerves pelted through me, which was bizarre. I’d lied directly to the face of every cop I knew more than once—each time with less anxiety than what gnawed at my insides right now.
“I like that you’re being yourself.” Nearby a group of people huddled around a picnic table laughed, and Noble shivered. “We get a lot of volunteers at the shelter who pretend to be good people but are, well, awful.”
I tugged the napkin out from under his hand, and he let me do it with a sigh. I tossed it down out of his reach. “There are cops like that, too.”
“So, that’s all you have? A badge and a dick?” He gave me an unimpressed stare, and my pride flared.
“Those are two fine things,” I muttered in protest. “Perfect things for a man, in fact.”
Noble snickered.
Internally I scrambled. Shit, what was there to me these days? An eternity behind me and I’d been reduced to babysitting a serial killer. What a fucking indignity. “Uh, shit. Like, you want to know other things I do or enjoy?”
He nodded, and I sat back, lost. I struggled so much with Abe. It had been hell getting him to behave to make it through the police academy. Only the fact that he’d wanted to be a cop, too, had kept him in line. I truly did love my job, but wrangling his ass was a full-time hobby. I stared at Noble and tried to reach back mentally to times before this host. Not all my hosts were brutal and required so much consideration. Several had been peaceful toward me, though those were certainly few and far between. My head started to hurt when I drifted too far down the road of trying to recover long-lost names. I huffed out a breath. “I used to travel quite a bit. Uh yes, hike, you’d call it.” I felt my face heating, which was awful.
He smiled. “That sounds like it would be beautiful. I’ve never been outside of the city, except on the highway a couple of times. When I was about ten, I took a bus here from Georgia with my mother and brothers and sisters.”
It was strange to think about something I truly enjoyed. I hadn’t been in the woods since I’d found Abe. “What about you?” I demanded.
He glanced away and shoved back his plate with his elbow. “I work a lot.”
“Go out much?” I fired at him. I’d be damned if I was the only one squirming on this conversational hook.
He shrugged and narrowed his eyes at me. “Bars are expensive.”
“With a face like yours, I’d think drinks would flow for free.”
He scowled.
“What?”
He rested his club hand on the table.
“So?”
