Page 25 of Bleeding Outside the Lines

“Does it matter who it belongs to?”

“Is it weird that it doesn’t?”

“I am not sure what to make of you, Cassius Cross,” I tell him honestly.

He sits beside me on the couch and pulls me into him. I resist out of habit. My body reacting with violence, prodding the open wound on his thigh with my finger.

His lips press together in a grim line. “Ruby, let it fucking rest.”

“I’m supposed to kill you.”

“But we both know you won’t.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because we aren’t strangers anymore. Because this shit between us is so electrifying it could power the city.” With a soft touch to my chin, he turns me to face him. His stare sends shivers down my spine. I open my mouth to respond, but he continues. “Because even though I walked up those stairs with a plan to kill you, I would not have followed through with it. I needed to know what it felt like to be inside you. And now that I know—”

“I still want to kill you.”

“But you won’t. You think you’re infallible, but you aren’t. You falter for me. You stumble. You mess up. And you feel this too.”

I shake my head, words escape me.

“I’m not invading your kingdom, Ruby. I have no intention of overthrowing your monarchy. I’m simply kneeling at your throne.”

I pull away from him, his touch becoming too much. He stands and enters the bathroom attached to his office. Cassius lets his words hang in the air between us, floating over the broken room, the room we painted red with each other’s blood. We are bleeding outside the lines, crossing barriers that aren’t meant to be crossed.

When he comes back, he has a first aid kit. The smell of antiseptic blends into the smell of blood and sex. His wounds clean, he threads a needle and pushes it into his leg. If it hurts, he doesn’t let it show. Red spots pepper the bronze hue of his skin as smears of blood dry on his handsome face. Evidence of our sins. Because that is what this is. A sin. A sin against the Reds. A sin against everything I stand for.

I coax the needle from his hand, pushing it through his skin and pulling it taut. Mending his wounds.

A sinner’s repentance.

“What piece are you in this game?” I ask.

He tilts his head at me in confusion.

“The world is full of pawns. Weak pretenders. And knights? They walk the path less taken. They are unpredictable. A king though, he knows his place, he knows his weaknesses. Do you know yours, Cassius?”

“You.” The word is a double-edged sword slicing through my armor.

I kiss him, tasting him like the secret he is. Naked truths pass between our lips.

Truths that could demolish a monarchy and assemble a kingdom from its ruins.

seventeen

My new chair creaksbeneath my weight, not yet broken in. The smell of bleach lingers in the air. The only evidence Ruby was ever here are the fresh stitches on my leg and the tape over my broken nose. She was wrong, we both knew it.

The woman sitting across from me is trying to appear younger than she is, with heavy make-up and tight clothing. Wrinkles don’t lie though; they play hide and seek at the corners of her eyes when she smiles. Which is what she’s doing now, waiting for me to respond to her last comment. She’s the kind of woman I would normally have had on their knees by now, begging for this job. Before. Before Ruby. It’s been three days and there’s been zero contact. Zero notes, calls, or clues. Nothing to hold onto.

“Mr. Cross?” the woman prods, her shoulders pushed back to give me a view of her ample cleavage. When I don’t respond, she stands from her chair and takes up residence on my desk. Her tongue plays across her lips, attempting to entice me. But she’s sitting on my desk. The same desk I had Ruby bent over only a few days ago. Black seeps into my vision, I wanted to bend herover it again, but now it’s fucking tainted. Tainted by a woman whose name I can’t remember and don’t want to.

“Get the fuck out of my office.” My words come out gruff through clenched teeth. All my effort going into not grabbing this woman by the throat and escorting her off my property. “You will never work here, and if I so much as see your face within one block of my club you will disappear, and nobody will ever find you.” The threat is not an empty one, the threads of my calm composure are unraveling. Quickly.

I expect her to scramble off my desk, a mess of limbs and insecurities. Instead, she surprises me by sliding almost gracefully down from her perch. She adjusts her skirt as she heads toward the open door. Her long black ponytail swings with the sway of her hips. Before she crosses the threshold, she turns back to look at me, her lips pulled up on one side, inquisitive.

“Curious,” she muses, her voice barely more than a whisper.

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