“What did you do to her?” Gwen accuses.
The abruptness coils my blood into smoke, whipping my head back to Razor languidly backing off me with a lazy smile, his eyes falling down my frame before flicking over to Gwen.
“Me? Why don’t you ask Bunny whatshedid?” He stops straight, stashing his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants, and turns a sharp smile to me. “What’d you do, baby girl?”
They’re all staring at me, encouraging the bugs I’m bloated with to gnaw on my muscles and chitter obnoxious hums that vibrate my shell.
Wiping my hand off on my pajama shorts, a hard swallow bulges down my throat, pivoting to face the triple threat on my nervous system. “Idid nothing.” My thumbs flick outward, my brows twitching anxiously.
The heat is sinking through my deteriorating flesh. It’s too stuffy to breathe and the glances Duse and Gwen are oscillating over the staring contest I’m having with Razor are making the back door look really nice right now.
But running off doesn’t help. I’m learning that.
“So…” Razor steps forward, tugging his big hands from his pockets with a sarcastic smile. “A detective’s number just, hm, I don’t know, spawned into your pretty fucking hands?”
Gwen gasps and Duse’s eyes grow so wide I can see the expression in my pulsing peripheral.
I stand my ground. Even though I’m about to combust. And I take a step closer, becoming furious with the fact that I’m not mad at him for this display of arrogance.
I’m pissed that he’s reinforcing my spine. And I’m livid that I want to do nothing other than mount his disgustingly trim waist and taste the haughtiness on his tongue for my own greed.
He hikes a brow at my silent bravery, giving me a sliver of a smile that heknowsworks like magic.
Besides right now. It’s aching me. But it’s not making me fall back.
“No, Razor,” I rasp, sticking a firm forefinger his way. “Maybe if you would have asked me, you’d know the truth. But why make it simple? Why would anything in this fucking house be simple?”
Some more gasps come from the left side of me and Razor drops his cockiness, his dark lashes framing the shock in his eyes to give me a picture I’ll hold on to forever.
I’m not presumptuous. And I usually don’t have a desire to spit out a curse word. But the cutting edge of that variety of vocabulary is how I feel in this moment.
And it delivered exactly how I needed it to.
The kitchen’s silent now. Which gives me a moment to process the sound of betrayal that came from the girls.
My brows furrow, turning to them still sitting in the heaviness. “What would it matter if I talked to a cop?”
“Why would you wanna? Do you really wanna go back-”
Duse spins around and cups her hand over Gwen’s mouth, the loud slap muffling her last word and cutting her off.
“Back to bed.” Holding her hand firmly against Gwen’s lips, Duse twists a smile back to me, trying to gaslight me into not digging around for what Gwen almost slipped up to. “We’re going back to bed for a bit.”
Thrumming in place, my stomach knots and my breathing catalyzes, watching Duse and Gwen rush out of their seats and scamper to their bedroom split off from the kitchen.
Gnossienne is pervading me. Any other time, I’d sink and choke and let the secrecy break me down; allow them to have superiority over me simply because I’m designed to be prey. But Razor’s influence is shifting me into a different breed; an animal that has its own spot in the food chain.
Not quite prey. Not quite predator. It’s something divergent that I cannot make sense of just yet.
“Bunny…” Razor takes a cautious step toward me, loosely sticking his hands out like he’s coming for my waist.
“Don’t,” I shake my head.
He stops a foot away, dunking his brows over the torment riddling his eyes. “Why was he in your tent?”
Do you really believe you deserve an honest answer?
My shoulders lift with another deep breath, my chest dropping with the attitude I almost unleashed on him. “I don’t know. That’s what I’d love to find out.”
