Page 41 of Serial Killer Games

“Definitely a pulse,” she saysto the side of my face, relaxing her hold. “I was worried for a minute.”

She’s thinking about death now. I’m always thinking about death. I could turn my head slightly and whisper my secret in her ear. But instead she sits up and from this short distance her face is a blur. Everything is a blur. I skim the bedspread for my glasses, but they don’t turn up.

“Why are you wearing your gloves, weirdo? We’re in the middle of a desert.”

I glance down. I have no idea when I put them on. “It’s the air conditioning. It’s freezing.”

“Should be perfect for the Iceman.”

She’s not cold, apparently. In one fluid motion she slides on top of me and peels off her shirt. She’s in soft focus above me.

I feel like we skipped a few steps.

She tugs the tip of each finger, one by one, and removes my gloves for me. I flex my fingers experimentally. I can’t read herface without my glasses. I don’t know where to put my hands, so I keep them on my chest.

“Is this part of your virginal Catholic schoolboy mystique?” she whispers. “Touch me.”

I don’t know where to start, so she starts for me. She takes my hand and places it over her heart, and my fingers twitch to life. I trace the contour of her collarbone, out to her shoulder. I can feel better than I can see. I touch a smudge on her deltoid.

“Colder,” she says, and I reverse the direction of my stroke. “Warmer,” she says, when my fingers collide with her bra strap. I’m holding my breath again. I brush a lock of her hair over her shoulder, and trail my fingers along the strap, down her back…

It’s both predictable and surprising, the way my body reacts to hers. It’s been so long. I keep calling her a vampire, but I feel like the one drawing my energy from her. It’s this feeling of being watered after being left to wilt. I’ve been dried out like a spore for so long, hibernating, waiting for a reason to come to life, and now here’s Dolores. Surprising. Interesting. Vibrantly and unapologeticallyalive.

I forfeit my battle with her bra clasp before I’ve begun. I bring my hand around her rib cage and touch the blurry blown out candles with twisty ropes of smoke billowing from the wicks—and her breath hitches, like it tickles.Enough of that.She threads her fingers through mine and presses my hands into the coverlet on either side of my head, pinning me in place, then flops down on top of me, heavily, and plants her mouth on mine and kisses me, long and slow. No one’s ever kissed me like this, like a spider sucking the life from its prey.

When she pulls away, she sets to work on the buttons of my shirt, quickly, and it’s too fast for me. My brain hasn’t caughtup with the moment. I wrap my hands around her wrists to slow her down, and I spot a tombstone tattoo on her inner forearm just in front of my face where I can see it, inscribed with dates. The dates Aunt Laura pointed out. I touch them with my thumb.

Dodi recoils and shakes my hands off. When I look up at her face inches above my own, her expression’s changed to a frown. The apex predator sniffing disdainfully at the slimy little amphibian.

She slides off the bed and onto her feet, and across the room I hear the rip of a zipper. Her bag clunks loudly when she drops it on top of the dresser.

“Pretty presumptuous of you to book us one room,” she says, rooting around inside. I finally find my glasses on the side table and slide them on.

“I booked us two rooms.”

Her hand stills inside the bag. She plucks the room cards off the dresser top next to her bag, and I can see the moment she spots the different room numbers on the cardboard sleeves.

“You followed me in here last night—this morning. What time is it?” I ask. It was close to dawn when we arrived.

She stomps into the bathroom, and I lie there, wondering what happened and feeling like an idiot, as usual. The shower starts. Unfortunately I don’t have a knife, or Mother’s clothes. The clock next to the bed reads one in the afternoon, which means I slept for seven hours. I haven’t slept that long in years.

We’ve missed the first half of the training session. It doesn’t matter. I get up and toss our conference lanyards onto the bed. Then I notice Dodi’s bag.

The shower is still running. I pick up the bag and weigh it experimentally in my hand. I put it back down on the dresserand it thunks. The zip is open, but the flap conceals the contents. This is different from a retaliatory snoop around someone’s work desk. I leave it there.

When she reemerges and barks at me to vacate so she can dress, I have a shower too. When I come back out dressed in the identical, boring white shirt and gray slacks I wear every day, she’s turned to the window with her phone pressed to her ear.

“Please make sure she actually eats something. Give her a cuddle for me,” she whispers into her phone. A call to her neighbor about her cat. “I’ll be home soon.” She registers my presence and ends her call without looking at me. She chugs the watery black poison spewed out by the hotel room coffee maker. “What’s happening today?”

“The seminar reconvenes in fifteen minutes.”

“Reconvenes?”

“We missed the morning.”

She doesn’t seem to care too much about this. “And then what?”

“And then we go out.”

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