Page 4 of Butcher & Blackbird
She’s wise to be wary.
My eyes stay fixed to her, and I take the opportunity to openly assess my dining companion as she surveys the restaurant. Sloane twists her damp hair over her shoulder and my gaze drifts down to her chest, like it has every two minutes since she walked out of Albert Briscoe’s bathroom with a Pink Floyd T-shirt and no bra.
No bra.
The thought echoes through my brain like church bells on a bright Sunday morning.
Her body is curvy and strong, working some kind of witchcraft on her stolen clothes that should look anything but sexy given they came from Briscoe’s closet. She even makes his jeans look good, the hems of the long legs rolled to her ankles and the baggy waist cinched with two red handkerchiefs tied together to form a makeshift belt. She knotted the bottom of the T-shirt so it nips in at her waist, showing a sliver of tempting skin and her pierced belly button when she leans back against the booth with an exhausted sigh.
No bra.
I need to get my shit together. She’s the Orb Weaver, for Christsakes. If she catches me ogling, she could pop my eyeballs out of my head and string me up in fishing line before I say the words ‘no bra’.
Sloane rolls a shoulder, doing little to help my mission to give up myno bramantra. Her fingers find the joint as a little wince of pain creases her features. She frowns when her eyes meet mine.
“He kicked me,” she explains, her touch lingering on the top of her shoulder with her answer to my unvoiced question. “My shoulder hit the edge of the cage when I fell in.”
My hands fold into tight fists beneath the table as white-hot rage burns in my veins. “Fucker.”
“Well, I did stab him in the neck, so I guess it was justified.” Sloane’s palm slips down her arm and she sniffles, her nose crinkling. Fuckingadorable. “He managed to close me in before he fell. He even laughed.”
The server approaches with two plates of ribs and one of fries, earning a ravenous glance from Sloane. When the plate is set down in front of her she smiles, a little dimple popping out next to her lip.
We thank the server who lingers for a moment in the periphery before Sloane pipes up with confirmation that we have everything we need. When the woman departs, Sloane snickers, that dimple deepening. “Don’t tell me you get that so often that it doesn’t even register in your brain. That’s just depressing.”
“Get what…?”
Sloane’s gaze darts to the server and I follow her line of sight to the woman who tosses a smile to our table over her shoulder. “Oh my God, it reallydoesn’tregister. Like,at all.” Sloane shakes her head and tears a rib free of the steaming rack on her plate. “Well, be prepared, pretty boy. My stomach has been eating nearby organs for the last three days and I’m going to devour these fucking ribs in the most unladylike fashion possible.”
I say nothing, riveted to the sight of her perfect teeth as she tears into the steaming flesh that slides off the gray bone. A drop of barbecue sauce gathers at the corner of her lips and her tongue darts out to claim it, and I want to fucking die.
“So…” I clear my throat in the hopes my voice won’t crack. Sloane’s brow furrows as she sinks another bite into the meat. “How come not Blackbird?”
“Huh?” She slips the end of the rib into her mouth and sucks the meat right off the bone to pull it past her lips with sauce-stained fingers. My cock strains against my zipper just watching her cheeks hollow.
Imagine what she could do with that fucking mouth.
I take a sip of beer and look down at my plate. “Your name,” I reply before starting on a rib, purely to distract certain body parts that are becoming pretty insistent about what they want. “How come you didn’t pick a name with Blackbird? Raven hair, flighty nature, the song…I’m going to hazard a guess it’s from your childhood, right? I heard you singing it back in the cage.”
Sloane’s chewing stops for a moment as she regards me with a thoughtful pass of her thumb over her bottom lip. It’s the first time her gaze has really settled on me, and it burrows right into my skull. “That’s for me,” she says. “Orb Weaver is forthem.”
Sloane’s eyes have darkened, and with just a blink she’s gone from a sexy, runny-nosed and ravenous beauty to a wicked, remorseless, iron-willed killer.
I nod. “I get it.”
I might be the only person who does.
Sloane keeps her unwavering stare pinned on me. “What’s your deal, pretty boy?”
“My deal?”
“You heard me. You show up to fuckwit’s house, let me out of his cage, burn his house down and take me for ribs and beer. Yet, I know basically nothing about you. So, what’s your deal? Why were you at Briscoe’s?”
I shrug. “I came to hack off his limbs and enjoy his agonizingly slow death.”
“Why him though? We’re a little far from Boston. I’m sure there are plenty of lowlife drug dealers for entertainment up there that you don’t need to come this far for one guy.”
A weighted silence thickens the air, both of us paused with ribs heading toward our mouths. A sly smile spreads across my lips as Sloane’s face falls.
