Page 10 of No Mercy In Red

I groaned at her, “I hate you.”

“Youloveme.” She shoved the dress into my hands. “Now go put it on.”

I begrudgingly took it into the bathroom, muttering curses under my breath. I should have known better than to let Lara pick my outfit because the dress was minimal, to say the least. Tight, black, and barely long enough to cover my ass. It had a deep plunge neckline that accentuated my breasts, with thin straps holding it up that looked like they would snap under the weight of them at any given minute. I glanced at my reflection, fiddling with the straps making sure that my girls were safely secure in there, and that they weren’t going to make an appearance. It was definitely out of my comfort zone, since the only time I ever wore anything remotely close to this was when I was dressing to kill, and even then, those dresses covered more than this.

When I stepped out, Lara’s face I lit up. “Oh. My. God. Max, you lookhot.”

I rolled my eyes, grabbing the wine and topping up my glass with an exasperated sigh., “I look like someone who’s about to make very bad choices, and who’s tits are desperate to escape.”

She clinked her glass against mine, winking at me. ‘Perfect, those tits are too great to not be out in all honesty Max,” she giggled raising her glass in the air, “Here’s to bad decision making. By the way, if I wasn’t straight, I’d totally fuck you in that dress.”

I gave her a deadpan expression, looking her up and down before responding, “Nah, not my type.”

She gasped, clutching her chest, “You bitch.”

We spent the next hour getting ready, music blasting as we danced around my apartment, screeching the lyrics to ‘man, I feel like a woman’by Shania Twain, taking shots between breaths. Lara regaled me with her latest hookup adventures, including a guy who apparently had a weird kink for feet, which led to a ten-minute rant on why men were the second biggest mistake to happen to humanity, right under birds. She had this really weird fear of birds, ever since she got her bagel swiped by one back in college, she has been fucking terrified of the so called ‘feathery bastards’. I definitely wasn’t going to ask her about Damien, God knows what had happened to him.

“So,” she said, plopping down on my couch to slip on her heels, her eyes gleaming. “Are you finally going to get laid tonight?”

I rolled my eyes, swiping on the dark blood-red lipstick over my bottom lip. “Jesus, is this an intervention?”

Lara waggled her brows at me, “It’s a birthday intervention. You deserve some birthday sex.”

I smirked at her, pressing my lips together to blend the lipstick. “I also deserve a million dollars and a private island, but here we are.” I gestured around the apartment.

She stood, grabbing my hands to pull me to my feet. “Yeah well, getting you laid is all I can afford.” She huffed with a laugh. “No more excuses, we are getting shit faced, you are going to flirt, and you arenotcoming back here alone.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “We’ll see.”

With one final shot, we grabbed our bags, I slipped on my black stilettos and headed out the door. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking about work, or murder, or the ghosts that usually followed me. Tonight, I was just Max, and it felt good.

The bass from the club thrummed in my chest as we stepped inside, the heat, the energy, the press of bodies pushing against us as we walked our way in.

Lara turned to me with a wicked grin, pulling me towards the bar. “Let’s get fucked up.”

And for once, I didn’t argue. I smiled back, signalling to the bartender for a tray of shots.

Fuck it.

Chapter 10

Connor

I was losing my fucking mind.

It had been a month since I first saw her, and I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop watching her, couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop this sick, twistedneedthat had burrowed itself into my brain like a parasite.

Maxine Pochon.

The girl with the long onyx hair and the wicked smirk. The girl who walked through town like she was the mayor, oblivious to the fact that she was playing a game of cat and mouse, only this time, she wasn’t the cat. I told myself over and over that I was being smart, that I wasn’t making any moves because I needed more evidence, because there hadn’t been another murder, and without another murder, I had no excuse to push forward. But the truth of it, the real, fucked-up truth? I liked watching her. I liked the way she moved, the way she barely acknowledged the world around her, the way she bit her lip when she was focused on something – always looking like she was carrying a secret that no one else could see. I found myself lingering outside of her apartment building constantly, memorising the way she would flip her keys in her hand as she walked inside, idly tucking her hair behind her ear, away from that incredibly beautiful face, when she was lost in thought. I shouldn’t have known these things about her, I shouldn’t have been paying this much attention to her. But there I was, every day after work, and every night,watching from a distance. I was ‘learning her patterns’, I kept telling myself, trying to convince myself that it was for the case. That the reason I needed to keep a really close eye on her was in case she slipped up, and that the reason I followed her, was so I could see when she made her move on the next son of a bitch who deserved what was coming to them.

But then there were the nights, the nights when I closed my eyes and instead of the usual nightmares that would torment me night after night of my father, it was her instead. I dreamed of her, dreamed of her in ways that made me wake up tangled in my sheets with my body aching for a touch that I had never had the pleasure of feeling. My mind was fogged with something filthy and raw. Max, on her knees, looking up at me with those dark, knowing eyes. Max, straddling my lap, nails digging into my skin, her pouty lips parted and breathless. Max, underneath me, moaning my name like she needed me, craved me, just as intensely as I needed and craved her. Every time I woke up, the ache in my chest was worse than the day before, because I wanted her, I needed her. Not just in the way a man wants a woman, no, I wanted to own her. I wanted ruin her and crack her open, so I could see what was inside, to be able to know what made her tick, what made her break, what made her burn. And fuck, that terrified me. I knew I had obsessive tendencies, I knew I had trouble with being possessive over things that were mine, but she wasn’t mine, she didn’t even know I existed. And yet, she consumed my every thought, plaguing my dreams with that painfully beautiful face. I was supposed to be hunting her, bringing her to justice, I was supposed to be helping my best fucking friend. But all I wanted to do was keep her for myself. I debated calling my therapist, I could feel myself slipping into a deep obsession, which I hadn’t done for so very long. But what could I say?

“Oh, hiya. I know we haven’t had a therapy session in years, but I’ve become grossly obsessed with a serial killer who I’m supposed to be tracking for my best friend.” Yeah, no.

“Any leads? Also, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Joes voice snapped me back to reality. I forced myself to refocus, gripping my coffee cup like it was the only thing tethering me to reality. We were sitting in our usual booth at a shitty little diner, Karina’s, that we had frequented since we became friends. Joe was looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer, his eyes narrowing at me with a look of concern. I could tell him, right now. I could open my mouth and say her name, give him everything I knew and let him take over and end this. That would put an end to my obsession, to this torture. But I didn’t. Instead, I shrugged, like I wasn’t sitting on exactly the information that he wanted, that he so desperately needed.

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