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My gaze slipped to the clock.
Eleven-thirty.
The drop was supposed to happen at midnight.
He only had a half an hour.
Then what?
He died?
There was no accounting for the way that thought felt like a swift kick right to the gut.
Or he lived.
With blood on his hands.
That in and of itself should have been an ice bath to my raging desire.
But, I mean, who was I kidding?
Almost all of my loved ones had taken lives. Some, many. It would be hypocritical of me to fault Andres for something I had let slide my entire life from my family and friends.
On another grumble, I went into my bathroom, gathering up the small laundry basket I had, then going into the primary bathroom to grab his towels, and making my way down the stairs.
It felt strange, yet almost freeing, to walk around A’s house in something other than my uniform. In this case, just my t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts that my cousin Billie had gotten me for my last birthday. I didn’t realize until I’d put them on that the pattern was not, in fact, just innocent flowers. Oh, no. It was little vaginas made to look like flowers.
Because of course it was.
This was Billie we were talking about. My free-loving, tantric-sex teaching, hippie cousin. The one who dragged me to moon circles where people got naked. And yoga retreats where, you guessed it, people got naked. Then did poses.
There were some things a person couldn’t unsee.
I was scarred for life.
“You don’t have to come, bubba,” I said to Val who was following behind me at a world-weary sort of pace.
I swear the look he gave me was very You know that I have to. Very human. You know, for a dog.
“What’s the matter?” I asked as I started down the basement steps. “Not used to it down here, huh?” I asked. “It’s kind of creepy. But, I mean, what basement isn’t?”
I think what amped up the creep factor was how cavernous it was. It was a massive house. The basement was just as big.
It didn’t help that I knew this basement, or one very similar, had once upon the time been a place that the previous owner, Lex Keith, had kept and abused young women. Including one of my aunts.
A shiver coursed through me at that.
It was ridiculous.
The place had been blown up.
Then rebuilt.
And judging by how perfect everything was down there, the basement had been redone as well.
Trying to talk myself out of the anxiety I was pretending had everything to do with the creepy basement and all its little, unfamiliar noises, and nothing at all to do with the fact that A was off on a suicide mission, I set to doing the laundry.
For most of the process, Val was sleeping peacefully at the door of the laundry room. While I fiddled with the order of things on the shelves, taking mental stock on what needed to be refilled and therefore purchased.
Like I was going to be around to do it.
The craziest thing was, some part of me wanted to.
What the fuck was that about?
I didn’t even do stock of the shit at my own place.
It wasn’t until I moved one load from the washer and into the dryer that Val jumped up, whining, giving me whale eyes and a tucked tail.
“What’s the… the dryer?” I asked, following his gaze to where the wet laundry was knocking around inside. “Oh, you sweet little chickenshit,” I called as he turned and booked it to the stairs. “I’ll be right up,” I called, putting the next load in the washer.
I didn’t hear anything.
I certainly didn’t see anything.
Not until his voice seemed to sigh out that one word I swore I hated, but never seemed to fail to send little shivers through my core.
Mama.
Before I could even fully process not only the fact that he was alive and seemingly unharmed, but also looked completely freaked the eff out, though, his hand was grabbing the back of my skull, and his lips were crashing down into mine.
There was no fighting the surge of need through my body, no rationalizing with my desire.
He’d come up on me too quickly.
I didn’t have a chance to get my defenses into place.
But, let’s face it, those so-called defenses had been practically useless for the past few days. That’s why I’d been working so hard to avoid him. Which hadn’t been easy since he seemed to be determined to catch me alone again.
And to be perfectly honest, the second his lips were on mine, all thoughts to denying this any longer just went right out the window.
My body knew exactly what it wanted as my arms went to slide up to go around his neck.
But A stopped me, both his hands grabbing my forearms, lifting them straight up, then pinning me against the wall by them.
