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Not wanting to linger there, we moved quickly. It wasn’t hard for us to sneak into the room opposite 404, which was thankfully empty, to set up our station.
I watched outside the window as Arkane placed a call to Mikhail, and from what I could hear, Marcus was still at the restaurant with Timothy Walters.
There were only a couple of hours left until midnight, so whatever he had planned, it didn’t involve him. And if he was telling the truth, wasn’t this night supposed to be about Killian receiving the package? Then how was Timothy Walters going to make it to the Fourth Cross lane if he was still at the restaurant?
“Still nothing?” I asked, as Arkane finished his call, my eyes still on the quiet street outside.
“Yes,” Arkane replied.
I nodded. “You said you would tell me about Kenny,” I reminded him.
I could feel his smile without even looking. “You don’t forget anything, do you?” he muttered.
“Yes,” I said, not voicing how true his statement actually was.
“Fine, we have the time, anyway. You’d better get comfortable.” I heard him pat the bed.
My eyes finally found his. He was casually sprawled on the bed, his back against the headboard and legs spread forward, while he played with a loaded gun in his hand.
“I’m not getting on that bed, even if you give me a million dollars.” I couldn’t hide the disgust in my tone. The once-white sheets looked crumpled, with an unrecognizable stain whose origin I didn’t even want to guess.
He chuckled. “Suit yourself.”
A sudden moan leaking through the walls made Arkane and me still, spine straight in attention. It was high-pitched, like a female cry. I immediately thought someone was in trouble, only for it to be followed by a man’s groan and the thumping of a bed, and the sounds repeated over and over again.
Someone was having sex in the next room, and that was the last thing I wanted to hear tonight.
I slid down to a seat on the floor and shifted my eyes to Arkane, who was looking right at me, and I couldn’t contain the slight spike in my pulse and the heat in my chest.
“Perfect way to kill some time,” he said. I had no clue what he meant by that. Did he mean to listen to the act or play out the act itself? Whatever it was, I didn’t comment on it. In a way, I didn’t know what we were, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know if the closeness I felt was simply one-sided.
“Can you turn on some music?” I asked, not being able to take the sound anymore. It wasn’t something I wanted ingrained in my brain. I tried to avoid everything that hyperstimulated my system. I rarely even watched movies because of my certain condition. If it weren’t for books, I didn’t know what I would do.
Thankfully, Arkane did what I asked, playing some loud classical music on his phone that masked most of the sounds from the other room. But I could still hear it.
“It’s only sex, Bella,” Arkane told me, following my gaze. “Nothing these walls haven’t seen.”
“A little too animalistic, don’t you think?” It did feel kind of wrong of me to be here and hear these people in the throes of pleasure. But even though they couldn’t look at us, they knew people were hearing them and got off on it.
“Sex is sex, sometimes fierce, sometimes soft. All that matters is the gratification.” Arkane looked at me. “Don’t you think so?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“I know you’re the true love kind,” he quipped.
“What about it?” I asked flatly. I wasn’t ashamed of it. In fact, I felt no shame for choosing what I wanted to do with my heart. I only ever wanted one man, a man I loved and trusted, or I didn’t want anyone at all. I was okay with it because it was my choice. I made it.
“You’re twenty-nine, and you still believe something like that exists?” he asked, like he was genuinely curious.
“What does my age have to do with anything? Time and space are merely constraints of reality…”
“A constraint of the mind,” he finished my sentence.
“So is age.” I met his dark eyes. “Are you not going to ask me why?”
“I don’t have to. I think I know,” he said simply.
My heart started to thud a soft beat. “Know what?”
