“I cleaned the bathroom for her.” Nelle picked up a smaller bottle, closing her eyes as she sprayed mist onto her face.
There was no way I could resist staring at her in the mirror as those lashes lowered, fanning the curve of her upper cheeks and her plump lips parted, dusted in a glittering sheen of moisture.
Beautiful.
Her hair had swung over a shoulder to her chest, and it drew my gaze downward to where the robe gaped above the swell of her cleavage. I swallowed once more. She opened her eyes, and I snapped my traitorous gaze away before she could catch me blatantly leering.
This time, her slender fingers curled around the smallest bottle. She followed up with two tiny drops of an amber oil that smelled of roses, and gently rubbed them onto her skin.
I squinted. What the hells was she doing now? And how many layers of oils and misty shit and lotions was she going to coat her face in?
She turned to face me, casually pumping another lotion into her palm and leaning her hip against the vanity. “It’s a little hard to get it super clean, you know…the bottom of the toilet bowl and all…”
I started getting this horrible feeling, and the scrubbing of my teeth slowed down as I stared suspiciously.
“Penn has some really good tips for cleaning,” she continued airily, rubbing the sweet-smelling lotion onto her face with the tips of her fingers, which made her honeyed complexion and the smattering of freckles glow. “And that toothbrush of yours was a perfect fit for the small area down the bottom and back of the toilet bowl, where I could scrub away into the curve of the bowl, really get in there,” she said, making a furious motion with her hand as if she was busily scrubbing at the bowl with an invisible toothbrush.
My toothbrush…
I blinked. “You used my toothbrush to clean the toilet?”
She wouldn’t…
She fucking would.
“Well, yeah,” she said, frowning, pulling aduhface. She flipped up a hand, pointing to the toothbrush currently in my mouth. “It was there after all, and the perfect fit.”
Oh my fucking gods!
I hurled my toothbrush across the bathroom, minty froth spinning away to splatter upon the stone floor as the plastic thing clattered and bounced along and struck the opposite wall.
I gagged.
My stomach dry-heaved in cruel convulsions.
I was going to throw up.
I scrambled for the mouthwash, fumbling with the lid, and poured it into my mouth, gargling and spitting it into the sink before taking another hit, suffering through the fiery burning mint.
“You are most welcome,” the sassy-mouthed assassin added, as she smiled at me with one of her crooked grins and drifted from the bathroom. “Goodnight, dickface.”
Throwing back my head, I gargled mouthwash again and again, spitting the green liquid into the sink before grabbing a new toothbrush from the drawer and coating it with a generous dose of toothpaste. I scrubbed my teeth, my tongue, the roof of my mouth, the soft inside cheeks, gagging every so often thinking of what she’d done with my toothbrush.
Holy hells, that girl was spiteful.
Finally, I finished up. Changing out of my jeans and the t-shirt she’d scrawled her message all over, I slipped into new comfy clothes and left the bathroom. I hid my one and only pair of remaining boots in the linen cupboard, on a top shelf behind the blankets.
Filling a glass of water, I sat down at my work desk, intending to use the rest of the night for more research. A plan had formed a few nights back, and there were things to do and uncover on Nelle’s behalf. I also needed to find out what my mother had been up to in Ascendria. There was an elusive puzzle piece missing from the jigsaw, and I had to unearth it somehow.
There were passwords on my cell phone and laptop, so I wasn’t worried about Nelle getting past them. I’d disconnected the room’s phone yesterday after discovering Nelle was using it to prank call our staff. She’d been annoyed to Nine Hells that the phone only connected to the house and not the outside world. Instead, she randomly called rooms and deep-breathed to whoever answered, or hurled abuse at them.
I frowned as my fingers curled around the mouse. It didn’t move. In fact, it didn’t budge from the desk’s surface.
What the…?
I tapped my keyboard…a couple more times…a couple more keys, when I realized nothing was happening on the screen.
A hiss of annoyance gritted out between clenched teeth. I should have fucking known. Nelle had obviously found my arts and crafts box to write the message on my t-shirt.
