Page 90 of Reaper and Ruin
A whirring mechanical noise started up.
I spun, trying to work out where it was coming from.
“Your hands are swift; your steps are light. But not all stains wash out at night.”
I stared at the speaker in horror.
The mechanical noise came again.
The floor fell away from my feet.
I didn’t even have a chance to scream.
I hit something hard, my ankles twisting painfully beneath me. I cried out, pain shooting through my legs as I crumpled into a ball, the floor I’d just been cleaning now somehow above my head.
The trapdoor slid shut again, enclosing me in a box beneath the floor of the house.
“Perfect crime,”
the speaker taunted as the darkness sealed me in.
28
LEVI
The club bass pounded through my skull. We’d spent some time asking around after Nyah and her brother and had met with nothing but tight-lipped scowls and denials. If the bouncers here knew anything, they certainly weren’t talking, at least not to us. I’d watched Dax’s and Violet’s desperation grow with every shutdown, until X had dragged her out on the dance floor and spun her around and around until she’d started smiling again. They’d eventually convinced Dax to join them too, and I was glad for it because sitting at a table with him, watching him drown his sorrows, watching the pain he was in at not knowing where Nyah was, had been killing me.
I hated seeing him like this.
Could only imagine what I would be feeling if it was Violet missing.
I shoved the thought away just as quickly as it came because it hurt too much. Losing her would just be swapping one prison for another. Losing her would mean my heart and soul and everything I was would be locked up, the key thrown away.
She was it for me.
I’d known it long before I’d ever laid eyes on her.
But she’d brought Whip into my life, and now I was so fucking confused I felt like I was back in that ocean, the waves smacking me in the face, invisible forces trying to drag me under.
I wanted Whip. I’d done things with him I’d never considered doing with another man, and yet they’d come easily with him. I stood in the middle of the club, watching men kiss other men, watching them dance and gyrate on each other. Watching them find dark corners to do more than anyone should be doing in public but unable to stop themselves because they wanted each other so bad.
It was exactly how I felt watching Whip walk away with a bartender twenty years younger than him.
My stomach twisted in knots as they’d moved past the bouncer, their fingers entwined around each other’s.
I wanted to rip the bartender’s hand off and throw it into the cocktail blender. I wanted to tear his eyes out with the spoon he used to scoop maraschino cherries into his drinks.
All because Whip had looked at him.
I stared at that hallway without blinking, the seconds ticking by in my head like a bomb, ready to explode.
I could imagine what they were doing back there, in some private back room of the club.
Their lips joining, opening, tongues stroking together in hot, dirty kisses. His hands running beneath Whip’s shirt, fingers finding the fly on his jeans.
Opening it. Pulling out his cock.
The bartender dropping to his knees to take him in his mouth. Whip pulling him to his feet, spinning him around and fucking him hard and fast against the wall.
