“You know I’ve been thinking about you since seeing you at Sellers,” he says.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful woman. All alone in a big, empty building full of dead people; you must get lonely.”
“I don’t.”
“Everybody gets lonely, baby.” He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back.
“It’s time for you to leave,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“I have a two-baby strike rule. Two strikes and you’re out, and you’ve called me baby twice in the last two minutes, so it’s time for you to go.”
His eyes darken, and there’s something off about his smile. “You need to learn how to relax, Doc. I could help you with that. I could take you out on a date.” His gaze drops to my body and crawls over me like something cold and slimy. “Show you a good time.”
I take another step back, and my back touches the wall. “I said you need to leave.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart, let down those walls. I bet you’re really hot under that frosty facade.”
He’s got vodka on his breath, and I wonder if he was at the nightclub where the man on my table was killed?
“You need to take a step back,” I say with an edge to my voice.
But he doesn’t listen. He comes closer. Close enough for that nauseating cologne to invade my nose and mouth. Ugh, I can taste it on my tongue. I quickly begin calculating how bad it would be to kill the head of a family … then again, I know the consequences. But it doesn’t feel enough to persuade me not to.
“Come on, baby. You don’t have to play hard to get with me. I know how to treat a woman. I know how to make her feelrealgood.” His voice drops as he reaches for my breast. “Just lighten?—”
He doesn’t get to finish the sentence. I grab a fistful of his shirt and press my scalpel into his neck, alarmingly close to his jugular. One nick and he’d bleed out on my floor in under two minutes.
His eyes go wide.
My heart pounds with the thrill, the visual in my mind of what his blood pooling out of his throat will look like. Cian is the second to see this monster inside me, which I try my hardest to hide. But if he’s not going to take no for an answer…
“I’m gonna say this once and only once, so listen good. You do not get to touch me. You do not get to look at me like I’m something you can buy or take or charm the panties off. I amnot lonely. I am not available. And I am not fucking interested in a slimy asshole like you.” I press the blade harder, and the sharp point dimples the skin just enough for him to know I mean business. “You bring me the work. You pay me. And then you fuck off. There is absolutely no scenario in this arrangement where you get to put your nasty hands on me and then walk away with all your body parts still attached.”
A dark cloud moves through his expression, and his fear gives way to something uglier.Humiliation. And men like Cian don’t handle humiliation well.
“Fuck you,” he hisses. “It was a compliment.”
“Copping a feel of my tits is not a compliment.”
“You’re a real uptight fucking bitch. You know that?”
“You should see me when I’m really pissed off.” I give my best crazed smile.
His jaw tightens, and his nostrils flare. He wants to say something. And he’s tempted to show me who’s boss. But the tiny part of his brain that has somehow kept him alive this long warns him not to push me. That doing so might be the last mistake he ever makes.
And it’s right.
He takes a step back and adjusts his collar. “You’ve made your point.”
“Good.”
“Just get on with the fucking job.”
“That is what I was trying to do before you got all handsy.”
