Page 65 of The Hand that Frays

A whileand three more orgasms later, we’re wrapped around one another in the dark silence of the hotel room when Lyla says, “I love you.”

The air between us is still charged, even though we have depleted ourselves multiple times.

“I know you can’t say it back, and I don’t need it. The way you just… the things you did… they’re enough. I know you feel the same way. God, I feel so raw right now.” She laughs, and I smirk.

“In love with a serial killer. They’ll make a documentaryabout you one day,” I joke, rolling onto my side and tugging into her body further.

She does the same, tossing a leg over my hip.

“Married to a serial killer, they’ll call it,” she tosses back.

I chuckle, tipping her face back as I dust my lips over hers. “I love you, too, stupid girl.”

She clears her throat. “You know, I said I didn’t need to hear it, but, fuck…”

“We all need reassurances occasionally,” I tell her. “I hope you realize just how much I do. I know I can never put it into words. If I could, I wouldn’t say them properly. They’d come out all…”

“Stabby?” she asks.

I jab her in the side with my finger, causing her to squeal.

“Something like that.”

She wraps her arms around me and snuggles closer. “I know you love me, Butcher. Or I’d be floating in bits and pieces down some river.”

I laugh and hold her closer.

“What now?” she asks me, and even in the darkness, where she can’t see me, my brows furrow at her question.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s next?” she says.

“Whatever you want, stupid girl. The world is your oyster, and I’m standing beside you holding the shucking tool.”

She laughs, and her entire body quakes against mine, almost leaking her delight into my deranged soul.

Almost.

Given years, I think she’ll infect me fully, though I don’t think it a bad thing.

“What an analogy,” she finally says as she stops laughing at me.

“I think next we go to Paris,” I say wistfully, an idea forming that I can’t let go of.

“Paris? What’s in Paris? Another job?”

I find her lips in the dark, kissing her ardently until I know she’s good and breathless.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

EPILOGUE

LYLA

Paris

I’m confident that everyone surrounding us thinks we’re mad. Or maybe Paris is the kind of city where a woman being led through the streets by a man who’s blindfolded her is typical.

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