Page 65 of The Sinner's Bargain

“You do not,” Vance immediately countered. “Remember Quinton? Not a lick of sense in that boy’s thick skull yet he went on to become a very prolific serial killer.”

“You don’t need sense to be a killer,” Oliver argued. “Donny was a world-renowned surgeon. He knew his way around a scalpel. That helps.”

“You need connections,” Thoran spoke up, silencing the other two. “People looking for the things you’re selling and someone at certain hospitals who will look the other way.”

Our gazes tangled together the way they always did whenever they met. “Do you...?”

He shook his head. “Blood makes me squeamish.”

I felt my lips twitch. “I see.”

He shot me a lopsided grin around the cut of pork chop he popped into his mouth.

Dinner mainly consisted of chatter between Oliver and Vance. The two could argue about anything. There didn’t seem to be a single topic they agreed on. At one point, Vance mentioned the fog was getting out of control and the swamps needed to be covered up, a solution I didn’t think was possible, but Oliver threw up his hands and yelled, “The swamps are an essential part of the ecosystem. You can’t fill them up. What about the frogs?”

I slanted a glance towards Thoran to find him also biting back his amusement. His plate was empty, unlike mine which I had been very careful to pick at enough to give the illusion of being touched without looking like a pig.

When Thoran rose and excused us, I was all too happy to extract myself from the room with a murmured farewell to the two still bickering. Thoran led me away from the shouting with a warm palm against my lower back.

“Are they always like that?” I asked as we started in the direction of the foyer.

His burdened sigh made me chuckle. “My whole life. Up or down?” He’d paused at the bottom of the stairs.

I glanced from the darkened pathway leading to the bedrooms to the curving corridor to the office with the books.

“Depends. Are you taking me to bed or on a tour?” It took all of two seconds to realize the full gravity of my careless remark. “I meant, are we turning in? Not we. I mean me. Am I turning in?”

The words jumbled out of my mouth in a high squeak of mortification while Thoran stood there, one eyebrow cocked, making no move to assure me he understood.

“Do you want me to take you to bed, Blue?” he says at last.

I swallowed audible, trying to pinpoint which way he meant. I also had to remind myself that the act of intimacy had never sounded pleasant during my training. The entire process sounded painful and traumatic. Though, I did like the way Thoran touched me. The way he held me. I did want to kiss him and something I wasn’t entirely sure how to put into words, but it wasn’t taking him to bed. The two were worlds apart in my head.

There was also the very large fact that Thoran knew Jarrett. A dominating problem I kept forgetting whenever Thoran touched me. I knew all too well what Jarrett’s grabbing hands felt like holding me down. Grabbing my breasts. Squeezing my thighs trying to pry them apart. Thoran hadn’t done any of those things and he was by far gentler, but the process would be the same, wouldn’t it?

“Let’s just walk,” he supplied when I took too long.

He didn’t seem upset by my indecisive and frazzled mind, but I knew what Mother would say.

“You’re a tease. A whore. You can’t flaunt yourself and not expect him to react. What happened was your fault. You asked for it. Jarrett isn’t to blame.”

At the time, I couldn’t remember what I’d done to invite him into my room. I’d gone over it a thousand times trying to think if I’d said something to confuse him or done something to make him think I wanted that. But it had all been such a normal day that had ended in an uneventful evening.

I’d bid him goodnight and changed for bed.

He came into my room.

He’d found me already in bed under the warm glow of the lamp. He’d grabbed me, ripping my nightgown. From there, it had been a fight. My sixteen-year-old strength against a two-hundred-pound man and the whiskey on his breath. I’d been so scared I’d soiled myself. That was what had saved me ... at least from Jarrett.

Nothing could have saved me from Mother the next day.

Jarrett had accused me of throwing myself at him. Of seducing him to my bed only to humiliate him. Even Malcolm couldn’t save me from the stick or the three days in the box.

But maybe he’d been right.

Maybe I had started it just like I had with Thoran. I asked him to my bed knowing I couldn’t follow through.

“Blue?” Still lost in the haze of that night, I flinched at the gentle skim of Thoran’s fingers along the frigid flesh of my bare arm. “Easy, sweetheart. Where’d you go?”

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