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At that, my dick roars to life. Emily feels it and kisses me, a wicked smile on her lips.
CHAPTER 18
Asher
I know I should be sleeping and not playing Mr. Snoopy Snoopsalot, but when I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I think of is that I never asked Emily what my granny gave her. I wanted to, but I totally forgot because of…well…other things.
Emily is sleeping soundly right beside me. I should just stay here, wrap myself around her, and hold her. I should forget about whatever it was Granny pressed into her hand.
But I can’t.
Lying here thinking about it feels a little bit like sitting in that theatre with a gas explosion building in my belly. No, slow leaks weren’t an option, and I can’t just expel the idea and be done with it.
When I slide out of bed and find my boxers, I do feel like a bastard.
And when I slip downstairs, all silent and lethal like, I feel more like a cloud of stench spreading through the house. What I’m about to do, stinks alright.
I stop in the kitchen to think. The brand new table is still lying neatly where I stacked it after it collapsed. I really should find someone—a professional carpenter or something—and pay them to put it together. The ax is nowhere in sight, so it must have been relegated to a closet somewhere. The garage? Is there a basement? A crawlspace?
Through the darkness outside, I can make out the shape of the brand new fence. The crew I hired worked wonders back there.
If I was something tiny and folded up, where would I hide? Or maybe just something tiny. Something flat? Round? Paper? Metal?
Granny could have given Emily anything. A piece of jewelry to wear because it would look like I had given it to her instead? Because maybe Granny thought I was too dense to think of that. It could have been a folded-up piece of paper with Granny’s phone number on it, a business card, a freaking tissue. Anything.
Why am I even down here?
I grab a glass of water and start back upstairs, but then I see it. On the sideboard hutch thing beyond where the table is piled.
Emily’s purse.
I know from much experience that a woman’s purse is off-limits. Like, put your foot in a loaded spring trap kind of off-limits, don’t touch a rattlesnake kind of off-limits. It’s common sense. I’ve never in my life snooped through anything that didn’t belong to me, let alone a purse.
But I still find myself setting my glass of water on the counter and tiptoeing across the vinyl flooring over to the hutch. The purse is plain, a square of dark brown soft leather with a long handle. I run my fingers over the smooth surface and sigh.
This is low. Like crust of the earth low, magma low, and whatever is at the center below that low.
But still, I pop the snap that keeps it closed from the inside and hold it up to the light. There isn’t much in there. It’s remarkably clean. Just a wallet, a pair of sunglasses, car keys, and a little pocket with a spare pack of tissues.
The wallet. It sucks me in like a freaking black vortex of evilness. The wallet is soft leather like the purse, though it doesn’t exactly match as it’s a shade lighter. I know they weren’t purchased together, which might be freaky, but then again, I have a grandmother in fashion.
My hands visibly shake, and my buttocks clench up as I pop open her wallet, which is held together by a snap too. There’s Emily’s driver’s license, credit cards, other IDs, some other cards, blah, blah, blah. Just the regular wallet stuff. The folded pockets in the wallet contain a twenty-dollar bill, two old receipts, a coupon for organic milk, and a smoothed-out, crumpled-up rectangle. It’s facing the wrong way, but I can’t stop myself now. I’m already the nastiest of the nasty just by looking in here, so I take a deep breath, grip the rectangle, and pull it out before turning it around.
As soon as I see the name, I drop it. The wallet too. The purse follows, and everything goes clattering to the floor. In the silent house, it’s as loud as a cannon blasting through the room.
I pause, hold my breath, and don’t budge a single muscle.
When I hear footsteps from upstairs, soft steps that barely make a sound, I don’t stop and gather up the evidence. I don’t frantically put it all back and grab my glass of water to pretend I was doing nothing on top of nothing down here.
Emily appears, with her hair tangled around her face, sleep in her eyes, and sheet creases on her cheeks. She’s thrown a robe on—a massive purple thing with a tail and a face on the other side that dwarfs her.
