“Hmm?”
“This isn’t regular tanning oil, is it?” I think I already know that answer. I ask just to be sure and to satisfy my endless curiosity about him. “It doesn’t smell like anything. It’s not thick. Not waxy.”
Almost immediately, he stops massaging oil into me.
Slowly, he steps to stand by my side. “Look at me.”
Though my head is heavy, I obey, tilting my head.
His gaze holds me there, thicker than the air in the room.
“You…” When he sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, it’s as if he’s trying to suppress his arousal. “It wasn’t on Jett’s tour. You know about tanning.”
“Yes, I do. I wanted to learn a little about it before we came here.” Heat sweeps over me under the weight of his attention. Guilt sweeps in just as fast. The axe, Bronwyn being tortured, it’s my fault. “I was so excited. I—I’m the reason we’re here, Knox.”
“Make no mistake, Trouble. You didn’t come here for the museum.” His thumb, wet with oil, traces my jaw. I lean into him, incapable of doing anything else. “I’m the reason you’re in Colbert. You were always supposed to come to me.”
17
SKYLAR
“To come to you?” When I gulp, a devastatingly cutting smirk stretches across his face.
There and gone.
In a heartbeat, he’s back to being unreadable. Somber. Cold.
The expression is now familiar. So much so that it disarms me more than the smirk. The butterflies in my belly respond to the sharp lines of his jaw.
“Yeah. You know I’m right. That you’re not like the others. You’re my clever girl,” he praises, still every bit as harsh and terrifying. “Mine.”
Warmth washes over me before I mentally slap myself.
Beinghisfeels way too good. And that’s a problem.
The biggest problem of them all.
The Skylar from home would never let something like this feel right. Discussing tanning people’s skin like it’s a totally normal, morally okay thing.
Never.
What the hell’s wrong with me?
He is. Knox and my corrupt, turned-on brain. I’m not a selfish person. I shouldn’t condone murder. Unless it’s the people who wronged me. But even then…
I have no right to lust after Knox. My pussy shouldn’t be wet in a room that thrives on death, surrounded by the ghosts of people who likely didn’t deserve their lives to end this way.
But—fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m so attracted to him that I could start crying and never stop.
“Stop it,” I tell him and myself.
“Skylar. Are you…jealous?” His eyes glimmer. “That there were other people’s hides here?Deadones?”
A humiliated cry threatens to break free, because he’s right. Now that he says that, I realize this isn’t about my moral compass. Isn’t about right or wrong.
He oiled other people. Touched them.
