Page 182 of What We Burn

I don’t even want to pretend to be normal anymore.

Holden shifts into operational mode. “Milo, start with wrapping the body for disposal. You—” He takes my arm and steers me toward the bathroom. “Shower. Now. I brought clean clothes.” He grabs his duffel bag on the way and dumps it on the counter. When he unzips it, he pulls out a trash bag.

“Everything you’re wearing goes in here,” he says, shaking out the bag. “Every piece. Boots included.”

I start stripping. The shirt feels stiff with drying blood. Jeans heavy and wet at the knees. I peel off my bra, socks, and underwear. Each piece goes into the bag, and I’m reminded of the last time I had to do this—the ruined pink party dress.

“What did you do with the dress?” I ask suddenly. “The one I was wearing the night on the beach.”

Holden pauses, tying off the bag. “We burned it.”

“Oh.” Six days ago I sat in a room and watched a dead man’s post load onto a wall screen. Me, in that dress, tagged possible new pet.

The dress is ash. The photo isn’t.

“I thought maybe you were keeping it. As collateral or something.”

He goes very still. His eyes come up to mine, and I realize I’ve offended him. Shit.

“Are you trying to piss me off right now?”

“No. I just⁠—”

“We took it to burn because it was evidence. Not because we needed leverage over you. We have never needed leverage over you, Sage. If you think that’s how this works⁠—”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

He lets that sit for a long beat. “Get in the shower.”

I get in the shower.

The water runs red. I stand under the spray with my eyes closed and my forehead against the tile and I let it all hit me—not the kill or the blood, but the after. Dale Stine is dead on a motel room floor and I did that. I chose it. I planned it and executed it and I enjoyed it, and now I’m standing in a shower while two men clean up my mess, and when the sun comes up I’ll eat breakfast and go to work and smile at customers and pretend I’m a person who doesn’t know what it feels like to drive a knife into a man’s eye socket.

The shower curtain pulls back.

Holden steps in behind me, naked. He doesn’t say anything. Just puts his hands on my hips and presses me forward until my body is flat against the tile, and then he’s inside me—one hard thrust that pushes the air out of my lungs and makes my fingers claw at the wet surface.

“Holden—”

“Shut the fuck up, wildcat.”

He thrusts into me like a man making a point. Hard, precise, powerful. His hand is on the back of my neck, holding me in place, and the water beats down on both of us and the steam is so thick I can barely breathe. Every nerve in my body is singing with the brutal, clarifying shock of it.

Each time his hips slam into me, the sound echoes off the tile, a low slap and a grunt that drowns out the water and the rest of the world. My hands scrape the slick porcelain, desperate for something to hold on to. My head is swimming with the leftover adrenaline, the memory of blood, the unbelievable fact that he’s not mad—he’s hungry, insatiable, as if the chaos in the next room is an aphrodisiac.

He fucks me until my knees tremble. When I start to slip, he fists his hand in my wet hair and tugs me back, exposing my throat to the rainfall. The edge of brutality is familiar, almost a comfort. It says I know what you are, and I want it anyway.

The orgasm takes me by surprise. My body coils, a tight fist of muscle that explodes when he grinds into me. It’s animal, and I gasp, almost sobbing, as my body shudders and burns with the aftershocks. Holden doesn’t slow—if anything, my orgasm eggs him on, makes each thrust rougher, more possessive. He’s claiming me, marking me as much as the scald and the bite of his hands.

When he finally follows, it’s with a low growl against my nape, teeth at my skin, a flash of pain that doubles as an exclamation point. The world comes crashing back in—the pounding water, the red-tinged puddles circling the drain, the sound of Milo whistling “Stayin’ Alive” from the other room like this whole night is a party and not a crime.

Holden braces both hands against the wall, his chest pressed to my back, breathing like he just ran up four flights of stairs in full gear. For a second neither of us moves.

“Don’t ever kill without me again,” he says against my skin. “Next time, I need to watch.”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“I mean it, Sage.”