Curious.
I wander down the hall. It’s lined with bookshelves that are groaning with books. Every inch of space is filled. They are meticulously stacked. Ordered by author name.
Trust Asshole to arrange books by Dewey Decimal system, rather than looks.
I pull out a book to get a better look at the cover.
Romance.
I check another, and another, and another; all romance. Gay romance. Bi Romance. Paranormal romance. Literary romance. Erotic romance.
What the actual fuck? Is he for real?
I creep down the hall and into his bedroom. There are more books. Bookshelves against every wall. All of them full. His bed is huge and has been placed in the center of the room. It dominates the space because of its size and the fact that it’s the only thing that isn’t a book, or a bookshelf in the entire room. I mosey over and rub his sheets between my forefinger and thumb. I can’t tell if I’m surprised or not to find the thread count quite satisfactory.
His en suite is all-white and otherwise nondescript. It’s so clean it’s hard to believe that it’s ever been used by a human being. I open his cabinet and have a good little snoop. Nothing interesting. Not even Tylenol. Most of his toiletries are in the leather toiletry bag he had at the safehouse.
I laugh out loud when I get to his walk-in closet. At least half the space is empty. Several shelves have been left bare.
What kind of psycho does that?
The shelves that have clothes on them are so orderly, it looks like the kind of place that would give Marie Kondo devotees a series of tiny little orgasms. He has four pairs of jeans, folded so precisely, they are each the exact same size. They’re stacked by color. Lightest to darkest. His cargo pants are there too. Perfectly neat and perfectly ugly. He has a few decent shirts hanging up, all pressed to within an inch of their lives, and a few well-cut jackets. A navy blue one, which borders on stylish. Again, they’re all arranged by color. Dark to light. I snoop through his underwear drawers. His boxer briefs are folded into tight squares. If I’m not mistaken, they’ve been ironed. He has one drawer only for white socks, and another for black.
It's giving Serial Killer, in a very big way.
As I walk back to the living room to wait for him, it occurs to me that everything he owns, except for the books, could be packed up and moved out of this place in twenty minutes or less. When I think that, the same feeling as the one before, the one that damn nearly took me out, threatens to hit me again.
To help push it down, and to kill time, I rearrange a few things in the apartment.
*
I jump to my feet when I hear footsteps at the door. I’ve been waiting for hours. A key scratches in vain at the lock. The door flies open, and Saint comes barrelling inside. His fists are clenched at his sides, his chin is tilted low. He looks threatening as all fuck.
His head whips up in surprise when he sees me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I don’t answer. I look around the room, making no attempt to stop the contempt I feel for his décor choices to show on my face. “Hatewhat you’ve done with the place,” I say.
His jaw tightens and his eyes darken. “Is that right? You little shit, you’re one to talk about style, dressed in that crazy get-up.Hatethe top,” he hisses in my direction. “It doesn’t suit you.”
The top I’m wearing is a one-of-a-kind, bespoke piece. It was designed especially for me. I won’t name drop, but a world-renowned designer pinned it and marked up the alterations himself. It fits me like a second skin. There’s a very real possibility that in the history of tops, no top has ever suited a human being better. Nonetheless, I pull it off and fling it onto the floor.
I see a slight flicker in his eyes. His Adam’s apple constricts and moves up microscopically. He wants to swallow, but he’s stopping himself. That pleases me.
“I don’t even know what to say about the shoes,” he says, with a small, sorry shake of his head.
I kick the left one off, sending it flying a few yards in front of me. I loosen the right shoe and kick it off in his direction so hard, he has to use a mammoth paw to swat it away, to stop it from hitting him in the chest. His face is still passive, hardly showing any reaction, but his eyes are growing decidedly more focused on me.
“And as for those pants, or skirt, or whatever the hell you’d call it. It’s unforgivable. I don’t know what the hell you were thinking when you decided to wear it.”
I’ll tell you what I was thinking when I got dressed, Asshole; I was thinking of slapping and/or seducing a boorish fucknut. That’s what I was thinking.
I unbutton them angrily. “Well, if you don’t like these, you’re going to fucking hate what I’m wearing under them.”
I step out of the pants and watch in satisfaction as he takes in the hot pink lace panties I’m wearing. His bottom jaw drops slightly, and I see him try to inhale. He draws a single breath in two jerky gasps.
“Hate it so much you forgot how to breathe, huh?”
He blinks slowly. “Something like that.”
