Page 38 of Sin Like the Devil

I feel the hum of his rising fever once more. “You were in rehab?”

“Spent more time in than out. Five stints.”

“That wasn’t enough to keep you out of this place?”

“Apparently not.” He laughs humourlessly.

I never give a shit about customers. It’s the price of doing business. Yet I find my heart cracking open and bleeding for this broken boy, hiding a deadly addiction behind smirks and over-exaggerated bravado.

Does anyone else see how hard he’s faking it?

This Raine isn’t real.

His entire act is an illusion.

“This isn’t a game.” I push away the empathy trying to gnaw through my resolve, redirecting us back to safe ground. “I meant what I said. If I have to kill you to get to them, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

“We’ve progressed to killing?”

“I won’t let them hurt anyone else.”

Rough fingertips dancing upwards from my wrist, he traverses my ink-covered forearm, leaving a blazing trail in his wake. I find my breath stuttering. Luckily, he can’t see me biting my lip hard enough to sting.

Those sure fingertips feel like tasers against my flushed skin. His thumb tugs my shirt sleeve, testing the rough cotton before he moves higher and wraps my loose, brown curls around his digits.

“What are you doing?” I ask nervously.

He fingers the coarse strands of hair. “What colour is it?”

“Um, dark-brown.”

“The curls are natural?”

His laser focus is making nervous sweat bead on my forehead. I feel like I’m being inspected. He lightly tugs on a strand, measuring the length against my jawline like he’s taking mental notes to better construct an idea of my appearance.

“Yes,” I squeak.

“What about your eyes? Colour?”

“Uh, hazel.”

Releasing the ringlet clasped in his fingers, Raine’s hand hovers close to my face. “Do you mind? It helps me to form a mental picture of who I’m talking to.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Most don’t complain about me wanting to touch them.” He sighs in a long-suffering way.

I want to tell him to get lost. Instead, I find myself suppressing a snort.

“I should’ve known the whole blind thing was a flirting tactic.”

“You caught me.” Chest rumbling with laughter, Raine seems to consider me behind those blacked-out lenses. “Feel free to do whatever you’d like in return. I’m an open book.”

“Um.” My throat seizes. “I don’t kn…”

An invisible hand wraps tight around my windpipe before I can say no. That damn curiosity is too strong to ignore. As my voice trails off, Raine waits expectantly. Not daring to touch my face yet, his hand hangs in limbo as I deliberate.

For once, I don’t want to run. Those violin-toughened fingertips promise salvation, and the smirking man bulldozing my self-imposed boundaries knows it.

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