Page 38 of Dare Me

“No, you can’t let me fall asleep.” I look at him seriously.

“Why not? You need—and deserve—the rest.” He picks up a surfing magazine off the side table and opens it to a random page.

“Because if I fall asleep now, I don’t think I’ll be able to wake up for a week.” I’ve been running on pure adrenaline since this morning. Even lying down on the couch was probably a mistake. I should have found something to keep me busy until our plans tonight.

After Bojan turned out to be absolutely clueless to the blackmail, his motive to kill Jeffery disappeared. Which left Ilya himself as our next most obvious suspect. After we more or less blew up her affair with her stepson, Marcella wasn’t all too happy to help us again, but Lochlan made her come around.

Speaking of, I say, “It was a smart move, your bluff to get Marcella to cooperate with our idea.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a bluff. I really did record her entire interaction with Bojan,” he nonchalantly reveals, flipping a page in his magazine. “Though I don’t know how much leverage it will hold if Jakšic already knows of the affair.”

“All the while trying to get into my pants.” I feign being impressed. “Quite the multi-tasker.”

He simply grins. “You know me, Stella Mae. I aim to please.” Words that I would have laughed off a week ago now make my cheeks flush.

It’s a weird mix of excited nerves and guilt that accompany the heat in my cheeks. On one hand, I’m seeing Lochlan in a new light, feeling things I never considered, let alone entertained. But on the other hand, I’m going down a dead-end road.

He’s simply not the kind of guy I should be with.

Let’s set aside the whole career criminal and mob enforcer thing for a second. He’s almost a decade younger and still in his hoe phase. I’m too happy with the current role he plays in my life to risk ruining it.

What happens on the island, stays on the island.

I don’t have the mental capacity to interrogate these foreign and complex feelings right now, so I change the subject. “You know what this all reminds me of? When Harlow went all amateur sleuth on Cash and had her little impromptu murder investigation.”

He laughs. “Poor girl, she really tried.” He puts down the magazine and picks up my foot resting in his lap. “She’s never going to live that down.”

I groan as he massages the ball of my foot. “Now you’re playing dirty.” I close my eyes and rest my head back on the armrest. “You know I can’t turn down a good foot rub.” Especially after wearing heels all last night, this is damn close to heaven.

I crack a lid open, and he smirks back, like he won an argument. There’s also a hint of something tender in his eyes. It makes my heart feel all twisted up because this will end when we leave.

“I promise I’ll wake you.”

“I’m just resting my eyes,” I insist.

“Mhmm,” he hums. “Sure.”

The laughter in his voice is the last soothing thing I need to drift off to sleep.

1. Play “Closer” by Kings of Leon

Chapter 17

Unidentified #2

I feel an arm wrap around my waist right before I reach the exit. “Careful now,” he says mockingly as I stumble in an attempt to pull away from him. My vision is blurry, disoriented, but I recognize him immediately by the smell of overpowering cologne and clove cigarettes.

I thought I’d fall asleep right there in the middle of the party. But when he led me to a booth, the leather cushion looked like a dreamy cloud to rest my head on. When someone new joined the table—his friend, I think—I left while they were mid-conversation.

Now, he’s found me again.

I’m awake but not aware, like sleepwalking. I fall back on a soft surface, a mattress, with no memory of how I ended up in this room. Something tightens around my wrist, pulling it above my head. A little voice in the back of my head tells me this is bad, that I should be scared, try to get away . . . but it’s so quiet and it feels too good to just close my eyes.

Chapter 18

Dream Murder Destination

Lochlan

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