Page 81 of Cruel Devil

“Weirdest part is, I’ve never actually seen anyone use this place.” Nyx shakes out her shaggy, dirty-bond hair and sweeps it over her shoulder.

I’d kill to have a body like hers. She’s not obscenely muscled, just toned enough that I know she spends several hours in the gym each week. She has the weirdest dress style, though. Maybe she likes men’s clothing, or maybe her guest room doesn’t have the same courtesy wardrobe as mine.

I wander around the room, staring at the projection screen, the mini bar with its massive silver coffee machine, the oversized reclining leather chairs.

“If not to watch reruns of Narcos, then what the hell do they use this room for?” I ask.

“To talk, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I scoff, sneering at the vending machine in the corner filled to the brim with snacks. “Hard not to feel rich and powerful in a room like this. I’m sure the president’s Situation Room has the exact same lighting. The Domingos probably use the same interior designer. What do you call this shade of red, anyway? Scarlet Slaughter?”

“Crimson Carnage,” Nyx says through a chuckle as she heads for the bar.

I laugh. “Massacre Magenta!”

“Shots?”

“Yeah, sure.” I flop down in one of the armchairs, then twist to the side and throw my legs over the armrest. “God, this is comfortable.”

“What’s your poison?” Bottles clink together as she hunts through the collection of expensive liquor.

“Anything that will get me drunk without making me blind.”

“We talking tipsy here, or waking up in a strange bed with a new tattoo?”

“New bed and strange tattoo days are long over for me. Though I wish they weren’t.”

“Preach, sister.”

Getting black out drunk sounds amazing right now. But I can’t drop my guard. After my time as sex slave, my boundaries have been replaced with concrete walls fifteen feet high, topped with electric fencing, and a fucking moat teeming with alligators, for good measure.

Nyx pours a shot and brings it over, clinking our shot glasses. “To surviving cartel life,” she announces dryly.

I crack a sardonic smile. “You should bring us the fucking bottle.” I swallow down the shot, then pucker my mouth and hollow out my cheeks as I drag in a harsh breath. “Ugh, what is this? It tastes like turpentine.”

“It worries me that you know what turpentine tastes like,” Nyx says, before tossing the shot down her throat like she’s sixteen without a fucking care in the world.

She goes back to the bar to fetch two bottles of water and the booze. “Twizzler?”

“No thanks. My stomach lining might survive the tequila, but my teeth definitely won’t survive those.”

“If you can’t drink their booze or eat their candy, maybe you should reconsider your living arrangements,” Nyx chuckles as she flops down beside me. She leaves a chair open between us so she can hike her legs up over the armrest too, our feet dangling side-by-side over the empty seat.

“Like I have a fucking choice.”

“You and me both, bruh.” Nyx tosses me a bottle of water, cracks hers open, and takes a long swallow. “Where’d you get your clothes?”

I pluck at my gray hoodie. “I assumed all the guest rooms had these. Yours doesn’t?”

“It might…if I had a guest room. But I’ve been forced to shack up with my husband, and he seems to forget that he has to empty out half his closet for my shit. Oh, and that I need like, you know, clothes and shit.”

She stares at me a moment before barking out a laugh, then carries on chewing on her Twizzler without explanation.

I kick her foot. “Come on, share the joke. If there’s something I desperately need right now, it’s a positive spin on things.”

“Oh, no,” Nyx chortles. “Nothing positive here. The joke is my fucking life, Andy.”

“Oh, god, it was that kind of a laugh.” I roll my eyes. “I can’t read people anymore. I should be a fucking expert by now, but after everything I’ve been through, it’s become a hundred times harder knowing what’s real and what’s a mask.”

---