Page 38 of Whips and Chains
He stopped what he was doing, his hands resting on the edge of a shelf. “So you just think I’m some sort of cheap hooker?”
“Aren’t you?”
His grip tightened around the metal, and he shook his head. “You’re a prick, you know that?”
I dropped a pile of condoms back into the box. “What? You are? Why act like you’re not?”
An awkward silence filled the room, and he turned to face off with me. “I’m not acting like I’m not. Yeah, I’m a sex worker. I’ll happily own that all day, every day, and sleep just fine at night. Because at least I’m not standing over there, casting holier-than-thou judgments. Which is pretty fucking rich coming from a man who spent the last six years in prison, has no job, and is living in a glorified version of a frat house.”
I rolled my eyes, playing down the fact I knew every word was true. “Oh, fuck you. You don’t know shit about me, Whip.”
“And yet you think you know me? You don’t.” He swore under his breath.
Irritation had me clenching my fingers into fists. No small part of it based on jealousy over the way Violet had taken him straight into her bed, needing him to comfort her before she’d even looked at me.
It was him she’d had first. Him who’d been her safe place.
She’d let me and X fuck her, but only after she’d had Whip. She’d only come to us to numb herself.
And that was the thing I couldn’t let go. That jealousy that he had something with her I didn’t.
“Tell me something real then,” I challenged. “You want to fling accusations at me. Make out like I’m the shallow one. You ever think that maybe all I know about you is that you sleep around because you’re so closed off that’s all you give people to form an opinion on? I don’t know a single thing about you, Whip, other than you like to fuck around and that taking a life doesn’t bother you. Not a single other fucking thing.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “What do you want to know?” He threw his hands up in the air. “You want me to open up my diaryand read you the last twenty years’ worth of entries? You want me to tell you I like baseball, and I run most mornings, and I drink red wine every time I put on a suit because it’s part of this whole fucking schtick? But what I’d always prefer to drink is the cheap bourbon in that bottle you’re chugging down like its water because I make you uncomfortable?”
The bourbon sloshed in my hand, and I realized he was right. Between the two of us, we’d polished off half of it in a very short space of time.
I didn’t know about him, but I was feeling it.
So it was easy to blame the alcohol when I glared at him and said, “Tell me about the woman and kids in the photo.”
He froze.
I instantly knew I’d gone too far.
I’d only been to his place once, and the photo on his bookshelf was clearly one he hadn’t wanted me to see. He’d snatched it up from under my nose and hidden it away so fast I’d barely caught a glimpse of it.
But it had been stuck in my mind ever since.
Whip. A woman. And two little kids, all grinning at the camera on a sunny summer day, a big white house in the background.
Pain flashed behind his eyes. Not the fleeting, surface kind that came from a minor inconvenience.
But the deep-rooted kind of agony that destroyed a man, one cell at a time, until his entire body was engulfed in flame and there was nobody around to help put it out.
The shock wore off, and Whip moved in so fast I stumbled back against the shelves to avoid a full-on collision with his face.
But he just kept coming, until we were chest to chest, eye to eye.
His warm breath coasted over my lips, just barely an inch from mine.
It would have been so fucking easy to close that gap. To put my lips on his and kiss him.
And for the tiniest of heartbeats, I held my breath, every nerve ending in my body coming to life and wanting him to do it.
But his mouth twisted in a cruel line. And his words came out harsh. “Don’t ever fucking ask me about that photo again. Forget you ever saw it, forget you know anything about it.” His angry gaze flickered all over my face. “They might call you Reaper, but if you so much as mention that photo again, it’ll be me sending your soul to fucking Hades. You hear me?”
He shoved off me before I could even answer and stormed out of the room.
