Page 159 of Bake the Town Red

When I challenge her by holding her tighter, Dahlia opens her legs, throws a foot to the floor. My T-shirt she’s wearing hikes up her curvy thighs, giving me a peek of her bare pussy.

Showing me just how wet she is.

Fucking her isn’t an option. We’ll go at it in the early hours of the morning. I can feel that. Feel how I could be inside her and forget the world exists around us.

The game.

I haul her up by her shoulders, arrange her on my lap with her back to my front.

She wiggles to turn her head to me. That’s as much as I allow her.

The rest of her body is locked in a tight grip. Safe in my arms.

“Four years ago.” My lips brush her temple when I talk. “It happened four years ago.”

“Right after…” The sentence ends there. Unfinished.

Dahlia and I know the rest without her articulating the words.

Right after Ian went on a killing rampage.

Right after I tried to save what was left of my world—her—by walking away.

“Yes.” With my free hand, I stroke Dahlia’s hair, moving it behind her back so I can press a kiss on her shoulder. That settles her, and her body relaxes into mine. “He lived in Brooklyn. I got that from the backdrop of one of his photos.”

“Rookie mistake.” She rolls her eyes, giggling.

“Anyway—wait, Dahl.” Before I go on, I have to loosen my grip on her. This night won’t end with my story. It’ll end when I show her the game. “Grab the remote from the coffee table for me. And the game controllers.”

A burst of excitement fires through her. I sense it in the way her body tenses. From how it propels into action.

“Good girl.” I accept the remote. Click a few buttons. The game—our game—comes up on the screen. “So. He was taking another one of his pictures when I showed up. He didn’t see me coming. Had no idea I was there until I wrapped the barbed wire I brought with me around his throat. Until blood dripped down the collar of his shirt. I took him out that night, although it didn’t do any good. It was too late. The lady he murdered wasn’t coming back.”

“You saved a lot of others, Ty,” Dahlia offers reassurances.

She believes what she’s saying too. But her heart’s not in it. Her voice is hushed, and when I glance at her profile, her lips are slightly parted. Eyes wide as she stares at the images on the screen.

At us.

A version of us, anyway. No one would recognize it’s either her or me. No one other than the two people in this room.

The woman’s raven black hair is styled in a short bob. The man’s—mine—is curly and auburn. Her eyes are green while mine are sky blue. My character has nothing more than two inches over hers.

I did everything I could to mask her identity. Including her profession.

But Dahlia knows. She grips her controller tight, her knuckles white. When I hug her and reach for the second controller she placed in her lap, I feel her heart beating. The ribs in her back expanding.

“I’m Sonja. An orphan, an abuse survivor. No one should go through what I did. It happened, though, and I can’t undo that. What I’m here for is to save others. Take down the bad guys. In my favorite playground. Here, where I work.”

Dahlia’s quiet, rubbing a foot on my calf absentmindedly.

“I’m nameless,”starts the second main character.“Brought to this world with one mission and one mission only. Help Sonja if she ever needs me. I…”he goes on after that.

The speech I wrote for myself is a familiar one. And even if it’d have been the first I’m hearing it, listening to Dahlia takes precedence.

“That first person,” she starts, her voice hushed. “Did you like killing him?”

“Well. I could’ve gotten him locked up.” Her energy is intoxicating. I shut the hell up for a second to lick the curve of her neck. Put my lips in the delicate spot where her throat meets her shoulder and suck. Her shiver makes every part of me hard. “I’ve had enough evidence to hand over to the police. I didn’t. I hated myself for how good it felt. How righteous I’d been when I drained his life out of him. When I killed others like him. I couldn’t stop. So, yeah, I did like it.”

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