Page 25 of Run From Me

Confusing? Me? I ran hot or cold. Really, that should be pretty damn clear. I wasn’t a well of complex thoughts andfeelings. I liked pussy and I liked blood. Sometimes the two combined.

“I’m confusing?” I asked.

I gripped the steering wheel while I kept one arm around her, and it wasn’t quite the dirty trick I could make it. I just needed to know she wasn’t trying to run.

“Yes, you. You’re confusing. I would have sworn on my father’s grave you wanted me. Back at the house? And then when you came into the morgue? I haven’t got all fucking year to wait for you to ask me out, so I did it. I mean, sure. I was more than a little worried the Vipers would stop me otherwise. I really—” She stopped.

Really what?

“Really what, Sparky?”

“Nothing. Just take me back to the morgue.”

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like that she was this angry about me stopping myself and showing some kind of self-control until there was no self-control left in me.

This was a first for me. I’d lost my shot plenty, and it cost lives. Never this, though. Pussy never won.

“So you think I’m into you, and yet I show some kind of respect and you threaten to go fuck one of my guys?”

I still hadn’t turned on the car. I was too busy staring out into the dark of the alley lot, analyzing why the fuck she was so far under my damn skin.

I waited for several seconds. Or maybe it was a minute. Who the hell knew?

“And now you’re quiet?”

I could feel her under the hand I kept around her.

“I need to know how deep you’re in with the Vipers. I literally threatened one of them, and that could start a damn war. Not that shit’s been all rainbows and unicorns, but you have the fucking balls to threaten to fuck a Spector on top of it all?”

The only sound in the car was a sigh.

“You ever just want to be wanted by someone you want?”

Had I?

I started the car and moved my arm from her waist to place my hand on her thigh again.

“Look. I don’t do all the feels and shit. If you mean on a physical level? Yeah. Sure, it sucks to get turned down. But this? That wasn’t what this was.”

I turned out of the lot and headed back to the morgue. We really did need to get some things sorted out. I also needed to get Rylee and Cas a wedding present.

“Hey. Can you get me up to the ICU?”

I was really good at changing subjects. Especially when I didn’t want to think about what had just happened.

I was really good at ignoring the fact I simply wasn’t ready to drop her off and let the Vipers have access to her.

“I… Yeah. Sure. Why?”

I made a turn and headed toward the hospital's main campus. The city morgue was still in an older facility from before the much nicer and state-of-the-art facility was built. Lucky me, perhaps I had a way to get in that wasn’t going to involve as much blood and bribery as I’d originally thought.

“I want to give Cas and Rylee a wedding present. You don’t have to come, but it would make this a bit easier and probably a lot more fun.”

She was quiet for a second.

“Tell me the plan,” she said, shifting in her seat.

I cleared my throat against whatever the hell was making my chest tighter. The idea of her by my side? She was just one more fling, and I needed that to be it.

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