“Oh, girl,” she said with a husky chuckle. “You were born and raised in LA. Don’t tell me you haven’t encountered a throuple before.”
“I’m sure I have,” I said because telling her no seemed like the wrong answer. “So that’s what the three of you are? A throuple?”
She set one of the containers on the counter and peered at me. It looked as though she was trying to determine how to answer.
Rhyan chewed on her lip for a moment, then nodded and shifted into motion once again. “They fuck me, I fuck them. I think that’s a suitable description.”
Very interesting. And, of course, my curious brain conjured at least three dozen questions related to that announcement, but I forced them back, opting for something more appropriate to a first encounter.
“Do you all work for Rule?”
“Yep.” She produced plates and chopsticks.
“Do you all … do what you did last night?”
Rhyan smiled, and the woman had a really lovely smile.
With her short black hair, which was cut and styled like Robert Smith’s from The Cure back in the 90s—only without the height or the tangles—she had an edge to her that I admired for some reason. When I looked at her, I immediately thoughtbadass. Although I couldn’t say why that was. Maybe it was the fact she was dressed all in black, from her T-shirt to her short skirt to the Doc Martens on her feet.
Despite her taste in careers, she seemed normal.
Well, besides the fact she was getting railed by hot, redheaded twins.
“We do what needs to be done,” she said simply.
I decided I wasn’t going to pry because I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear their war stories. I certainly didn’t want to hear the details of what it took to clean up a crime scene or to stage it elsewhere. Plausible deniability and all that.
“I suggest you eat if you’re hungry. Once Jinx gets in here, he’ll clean out whatever’s left.”
Instinct had me turning to look for Jinx. He was squatting down by the pool, petting Waldo while Rule scribbled something on a paper the officiant passed him.
“I take it you’ve met Jinx,” Rhyan noted.
“I have, yes.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Oh, we had a nice long chat. His vocabulary … I’ve never met a man who was so articulate.”
There was a brief moment of silence before a huffed, “Seriously?”
I glanced at her over my shoulder. “No. But it was the best silent conversation I’ve ever had.”
She laughed.
I turned to face her. “Is his mutism by choice or medical condition?”
Rhyan canted her head as though considering. “Damn good question.”
I found it oddly interesting that they seemed to be close, yet no one knew much about the other.
“How many more of you are there? That work for Rule, I mean.”
“That’s it. Just the four of us.”
I looked back when I heard footsteps and noticed Rule standing just inside the house. His gaze was on me, but I couldn’t decipher what he was thinking. I did, however, like the way he looked at me.
Probably not the sanest thing to acknowledge when I was standing in a house full of people who likely owned stock in cleaning supply companies whose products removed blood stains. Yet, I couldn’t deny there was a spark of something between us. I first noticed it when I opened the door and saw him standing on my mother’s front porch. He was exactly as I remembered him from all those years ago. Dark and mysterious and insanely sexy.
