“Come on, I’m not a cop right now. I’m your date. I won’t tell anyone. Scout’s honor.”
She narrows her eyes, then shrugs. “Congressman Whitby.”
I pause mid-chew and stare at her. She continues eating, avoiding my eye, and I wonder if I heard her right. “He had a heart attack.”
“Yes, he did.” She winks at me.
I place my hand on her forearm to pause her next bite. “Wait, Monty, are you being serious? You killed Jackson Whitby?” I ask and she nods slowly. “He raised millions for charity. He was the face of change. He was doing so much good for the community. How could you do that?”
“He was also beating the shit out of his wife on the daily.”
I freeze in place. “What?”
“He’d been doing it for years, and he was turning on the kids, too. So, his wife hired me. I killed him. She asked that it look natural, so that’s what I did. She got her life insurance, moved her and the kids away, and now she’s happily single and living in Texas. Good for her, I say. I support women’s rights and their wrongs.”
I lean back in my chair, speechless. I met Jackson and his wife once, and while she was quiet, there didn’t seem to be anything off. I can’t believe I missed that.
“Grossest murder?” She asks, totally unaffected by the moment.
My mind has gone blank, though. I’m still too focused on her confession. “Too many to say. You?”
“Watched someone fall under one of those big lawnmowers. Tore him up. RIP Karl.” She takes a sip of her drink. “He was a prick, though.” I force a smile, and a few seconds tick by. “Are we going to talk about earlier?” she asks, balling up her wrapping and placing it in the bag the food came in. “If I hadn’t stopped it, would you have kissed me?”
She meets my eye, and I put my own packaging away. “Yes.”
“So … it’s good that I stopped it, right?”
It is. But it doesn’t stop the warmth that follows her words, or the need to throw caution to the wind and kiss her anyway.
“It’s good it didn’t happen, because I wouldn’t have stopped at just a kiss.”
She shifts in her seat, and the silence that falls has me wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
But maybe speaking about it gives life to the almost-mistake and we’ll be more careful in future.
Leaning forward, Monty tears a strip of the paper bag and takes a pen out of the glove compartment. She scrawls something on the brown packaging and hands it to me.
IOU one kiss
I look at her.
“Now you can have one anytime you want. Or never, if you want that, too. And you know it will never go any further than just a?—”
Seizing the back of her neck, I pull her lips against mine.
It’s a mistake. A glaring, glowing, horrendous mistake, but fuck it. It’s just a fucking kiss. Who the hell cares who it’s with or if I’ll regret it? We’re grown-ups. We can be intimate and not have it mess up our friendship, if that’s even what this is.
Not even seconds pass before she’s leaning into the kiss, moaning into my mouth, the sound sending zips of pleasure down my spine and into my dick. She parts her lips to allow my tongue to sweep across hers, and I can’t believe I’m kissing Monty.
Murderer Monty.
Monty who swept into my life like a goddamn hurricane.
She pulls back and gasps, “I’m still sweaty from the run?—”
“I don’t give a fuck.” I pull her over the handbrake and onto my lap, her firm body pressed to mine as I kiss her again. I run my hands up her spine, my palms flat against her back, and she pushes her breasts against my chest. My dick is hard in my running sweats, and I’m glad she doesn’t grind against me, because I’d fuck her right here. It’s been too long since I’ve slept with anyone, and I have a feeling Monty would give me a night I’d never forget.
We make out like horny teenagers at prom, my lips only roaming as far as her throat, even though I’m desperate to go further. She moans prettily in my ear as I nibble her neck, and I grit my teeth against the pleasure when she does the same to me.
