Janelle asks with a wavering voice, “Where do I aim?”
“Right along his neck, since we’re this close. That would make it quick.”
She cares about not hurting people. And all I want is to make her do something that will force her to feel closer to me. I don’twant to touch and take her if she doesn’t want me, but so far, no gentle touch has brought Janelle any closer to jumping my bones. I crave physical closeness from her and even more than that, I crave intense, yearning attachment.
“Zeb…” she whispers. “I can’t.”
Then she pulls the trigger – and Janelle cuts off his breath with a single shot. I don’t have to say anything else.
Chapter Fifteen
Janelle
When we’re done, Zeb takes me back inside. The girl working at the front desk stays crouched beneath it until Zeb leads her out and interrogates her about whether she called the cops or not. She tells him that she worked for someone named either Oska or Husky… I’m not sure if I was hearing everything clearly because the gunshots honestly nearly blew out my eardrums. Zeb doesn’t seem as shaken up as I am.
“We’re close enough to Wyatt that I can get him to bring a crew out,” Zeb tells the front desk girl. “Are you working all night?”
“No. There was someone coming to take over later.”
“Call your replacement and tell her not to come in. I need you to work a double shift tonight, I’ll pay you three days wages extra.”
“I know how this works,” she says. “Sadly.”
“Right,” Zeb says. “Need a cigarette?”
“I wouldn’t mind one.”
“Don’t run off on me,” Zeb says. “It would be my pleasure to hunt you down.”
“I have bills to pay, Mr. Blackwood. I wouldn’t run off.”
“Smart girl.”
The “smart girl” goes to have her smoke. Zeb comes back around the front desk and kisses the top of my forehead.
“I need you to take a good shower for me, then we’ll hit the road.”
“What will you be doing?” I ask him. I don’t want Zeb to leave my side, but I’m terrified to admit it, honestly. There’s something about what happened out there that scrambled my brain and I don’t know what to do next. Everything just seems to escalate when I’m around him, but when I think of exactly what happened, he somehow doesn’t seem like the villain.
It just seems like he’s making the best choices he can under stress. I don’t know how the hell this ended up with me killing multiple people. I don’t even know what to tell Rana at this point. I have to call her back. Not right away, but I’ll have to tell her about what happened without telling her that I joined a man I just met on a murder spree.
Zeb finally answers my question, after a painfully long silence where I find myself staring uncomfortably long into his pale blue eyes. “Cleaning up. Getting my men out here.”
I don’t mean to cast doubt on his plan, but my heart thumps nervously at the reminder that just outside the front door of this motel, we have five dead bodies. “Your men live closer than the cops?”
Zeb reaches out and touches my lower lip with his thumb. I shiver as he touches me, but even then I don’t assume anything romantic about him or his touch. We’ve slept in the same room for long enough now that if Zeb felt any all-consuming lust towards me, he would have acted on it before now, and it wouldn’t be something this simple.
Still, his touch has the unfortunate impact of sending a nervous shiver down my spine. I can’t stop looking at the dark, murderous expression still on his face, like he’s still in the middle of a battlefield. Despite that, I feel safe under his gaze,like when he looks at me all he wants to do is protect me. He’s just willing to kill to do that.
“Shower,” Zeb mutters. “That’s all I need you to worry about right now.”
It feels good to have hot water running down my back. I know I should expect Zeb to return, but I don’t expect him to get back so quickly. Maybe I’m too numb from what happened that I don’t notice how much time passes. I hear Zeb’s footsteps getting closer to the bathroom door and I remember that I didn’t lock the bathroom door before climbing into the shower. I hope Zeb doesn’t have the sense to push the bathroom door open but – he does. I flinch when I hear the door open, but Zeb doesn’t let that panic last because he announces himself within seconds of entering the room.
“I thought I would come check on you now that everything is under control…”
He gently closes the door behind him, before I hear his footsteps lead him farther into the bathroom.
“Sorry. I hope you don’t mind me intruding,” Zeb says. I hear a belt unbuckling and I freeze beneath the hot water. Part of me wants to peel the shower curtain back and look at him to see if he’s really getting naked with me right here in the shower, but I don’t want to see Zeb’s bare dick right now.
