“Sure I do. I’ve trawled through every single porn clip you’ve watched in the past six months. I know what you like. I know what you search for, and I know what you watch over and over.”
Heat rushes up from my chest to my face and settles like a weight across my cheeks. I feel hot. From fury. Not embarrassment.
Okay, fine.I’m a little embarrassed. Who wouldn’t be?
But I’m mainly furious. As I should be. As I have every right to be. This is yet another gross invasion of my privacy. I decide it’s best not to give him the pleasure of knowing he’s affected me, but I also decide then and there that he’s going to buy me pizza for dinner if it’s the last thing he ever does. I mosey over to the kitchen and hoist myself up so I’m sitting on the counter. I choose a spot I’m sure will crowd him.
“I want pizza,” I say over and over.
As he chops bell peppers, I reach down now and again and nudge the cutting board. When he asks me to stop, I swing my legs back and forth, allowing them to bang into the kitchen cabinet loudly. It isn’t long before I have him right where I want him.
“I can’t fucking well have pizza delivered here, even you must understand that.” He’s at his wits end with me and that makes me irrationally happy.
“Why don’t you just get one of your little friends to pick it up and deliver it here?”
He lets out the longest sigh ever made by a human being under the age of eighty. He digs in his pocket for his phone and then steps away to the corner of the room near the entrance. I hop off the counter and follow him there.
He’s already on the phone, talking in his usual hushed phone voice, as if he doesn’t want me to hear. I decide to tell him how dumb that is as soon as he ends the call.
“What kind of pizza d’you want?” he asks through his teeth.
“Pepperoni. Pepperoni fromLuca’s. I only eat pizza when I’m in Italy, or if it comes fromLuca’s. You should know that, Asshole.”
He relays the message begrudgingly. The person on the other end of the line seems none too pleased about it, so I up the ante, “Tell them to stop on the way and pick up some moisturizer for me. There’s no way I can go home looking like this.” When he stares daggers at me, I add, “and dental floss.” When I’m absolutely certain he’s seconds away from committing a violent crime against me, I give him a little tap on the shoulder and whisper, “Tell them not to worry about the floss. I’ll just floss when I get home tomorrow. It’s fine. It’s no problem.”
He ends the call and shoves the phone back into his pocket. I can tell he’s damn near apoplectic. I’m borderline jubilant. I’m so happy in fact, that when the pizza arrives and he puts on a rerun of True Blood, I find myself thinking that being kidnapped is far from the worst thing that could happen to someone.
Chapter 10
Saint
Iswingmylegsout of the bed and onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
I thought he was sleeping. God knows, I did what I could to wear him out. We were both feral by the time we got into bed.
“Just making sure everything’s in place for tomorrow. Go back to sleep.” He sighs softly in the dark. I hear a whisper of uncertainty in his breath. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. You’ll be home by this time tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with that guy, your partner, or whatever. I don’t trust him.”
Don’t worry, Damon, I’d never let anyone like him near you.
“You won’t. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
He sighs again. This time without the uncertainty.
I switch the flashlight on my phone on and walk over to the dining table without stubbing my toe. I open my laptop and start going through all my checklists methodically, the same way I always do the night before a hand-over.
I can hear Damon breathing. His breaths are longer and lower. Sleep has found him. It’s dark in the room but the light from my laptop is bright enough that I can make out the shape of him in the bed. I can tell he’s curled up on his side. He was curled up on his side the last time I took him. We were both tired. Both of us could hardly move. I lay behind him, on my side, too, and entered him slowly.
Fuck.
I shake my head. I need to snap out of this. I need to get my head in the game. And I will. But before I do, I allow myself a brief moment to think the stupidest thing on the planet. I allow myself to imagine what it would be like to keep him. To take him and run. To take him and hide. To bundle him up and keep him for myself.
It would be insanity, obviously. It would be carnage. My partners would kill me. Not like,ooh, I’m so mad, I could kill you. They’d kill me dead. Like homicide. Like police tape and stainless-steel coroner’s tables. No doubt about it. Even if they didn’t, and even if the law didn’t catch up with me, Damon would definitely kill me. He’d kill me with his bare hands the first time I let my guard down, or he’d annoy me to death. Either way, it wouldn’t be a good way to go. It would be a horrible death.
It's a stupid thought. I’d never act on it. Not in a million years.
