Page 65 of Pure Killers

Dirk groans as he climbs to his feet, straightening his shirt. “That would be the perfect end to a perfect day.”

Gillian has thankfully moved on for a beat. “I’m trying to apologise to you,” I say to Dirk, since my attempts so far seem to not have been obvious enough.

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” he asks with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“Look, I know I was an idiot. After everything you do for me…”

“Please don’t,” he says, flatly trying to brush me off. He doesn’t want to hear it, especially now. God, and he doesn’t even know what I was doing with Needler when I thought it could be him.

“Look, how about you just say something back to me?”

“What?”

“Tell me what you think of me, be mean! Then we’ll be even.”

“We won’t be even.”

“Why not?”

Finally, he snaps. “Because you’re you!” After a frustrated noise, Dirk adds, finally with a little vehemence, “You’re just so damnfrustrating!”

Well, ‘frustrating’ isn’t the worst thing he could have called me, but he’s clearly not any happier because of this conversation. “Fine.” I spread my hands, giving up. “Let’s get this done, then.”

“I am trying,” he says drily.

Exasperated, I snap back at him, “Would you take it seriously then? I can do it. I’m not a child.”

His brow darkens. “You want me to take it seriously?”

“Yes!” I half-yell, not realising what I might be signing up for.

He reaches for me suddenly, a grab we’re all familiar with from these sessions, and I’m too thrown off to see it for the feint itis. I do the countermove, slapping his arm away, but his other hand snaps up around my wrist, using that to spin me around, bringing my back up hard against his chest. With his hold still on my wrist, Dirk pulls it hard against the front of my shoulder, my forearm between my breasts. Then his free arm pins my other, wrapping across my waist like a bear hug.

Nothing hurts, but it’s constricting, his arms thick around me, his body a solid mass along my back. I feel his breath through my hair as his chin presses to my ear.

“Argh! Let me go!” I push against his arms, but the way he’s got mine makes it impossible to get any leverage. This close, wrapped up by him, he smells sharply of man, sweat and something smokey underlying it.

“You wanted me to take it seriously,” he reminds me, voice gruff against my temple, bearing my wriggling with no benefit to me.

“This is not what I…” With nothing in the upper body working, I try the lower body, jerking my hips back so that I can bend forward and maybe overreach his arms. I hit his midsection, looking for a way to break free, but I find something else instead, something hard and obvious against the flesh of my butt. Having not expected that, I gasp, and feel as much as hear Dirk’s breath catch. His hold snaps off me so fast that I stumble forward.

I catch myself to spin around to face him, and for a moment we just stare at each other, breath coming fast. By his face he’s surprised too, either by his reaction or at the move I did to feel it.

But there’s defiance in the set of his chin, and I know he’s not about to apologise.

“Good job Ginsburg, passed!”

***

Having made things somehow worse with Dirk, I leave the gym but not the station. On impulse, I stop at the lab, and find Rosie in there, working late.

She looks up at me and gives a soft nod. Taking that as enough, I let the door tap closed behind me. “I wanted to check how you’re doing?”

With a soft chuckle, she asks, “You mean since my lab assistant turned out to be a serial killer?”

I look at the ground. “Yeah, since that.”

“Boring, would you believe? Just a lot of throwing out samples and cleaning everything he ever touched.”

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