Page 14 of Lovely Wicked Things

Her dark, discerning gaze assesses me sharply. Her in her professional suit, me in my skirt and blouse. Regardless of my seemingly professional attire today, we’re a paragon of opposites.

“Make a note,” she reiterates sternly. “Do not interrupt the questioning.”

An inky coil of irritation wraps my spine. The tolerance I usually harbor for my superiors is wearing thin, resulting in a stiff nod.

Trying to diffuse the unsettling feeling, I glance again at Tabitha. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap. She’s sporting the same headband she appears to always wear. Like the hair tie Devyn gave me at the ravine, Tabitha’s band boasts a similar knit pattern.

At the hollow pang in my chest, I turn away. “How are the recovered victims acclimating?” I ask Rana, steering the conversation onto the residents who fled the mine during Devyn’s ritual.

During my debriefing, I was unable to recount for certain how many of the missing locals were there. I had assumed all thirty-three—but as I was drugged at the time, and under duress, I can’t trust my memory. As of now, twenty-three of the missing locals have been recovered.

Rana’s expressive eyes betray her distress, but she quickly masks her features. “They’re brainwashed and have no tongues. Makes communication difficult.”

Her glib response feels forced, and in direct conflict with the worry I see creased in her expression. She’s holding something back.

“I really would like the opportunity to try to interview?—”

“That’s not why I brought you in,” she says, cutting me off. Her ability to avoid relinquishing information is unmatched. From the moment I met her at the crime scene, I’ve had a difficult time getting a read on her.

“Along with Professor Locke’s insight into the esoteric angle—” her words cut short as the door opens “—your expertise in criminal behavior will provide a logical counter for the interview, which we can now start.”

I feel him before he even enters the room, his intense energy a force that draws my gaze like a live wire seeking a connection.

Charles Crosby enters first, Kallum emerging right behind his lawyer, and my breath shallows. The pace of my heartbeat quickens to a frantic staccato pulse in my veins as an electric current heats my blood to a frenzy. The strong familiarity hits me in a whole new way as I try to reconcile my past and recent memories of him.

His dark presence slices through the tension in the room like the sharpest blade, his striking, lethal appearance just as honed. The stylish black suit and long overcoat taper to his toned build to emphasize every leanly defined muscle.

His hands are no longer bandaged, revealing the celestial tattoos and inked sigils. The memory of his slashed palms grazing my skin sends a hollow throb between my thighs. I’m flint to his abrasive surface, and we’re entirely too combustible.

On impact, his gaze crashes into mine to make that grounding connection, and suddenly we’re the only two people in the room.

Time slows when Kallum looks at me, the rules which govern the universe no longer apply, and I can feel his gaze like a brushfire racing over my body, feel the unquenchable burn when his eyes settle on my lips like a brand.

Past and present collide, each memory layering one on top of the other to twist me, and I wonder how I was ever able to deny what’s between us.

The crooked slant of his lips exposes that devilish smile, and I’m affected. Utterly. A light bruise dusts his jaw from his fight with Alister, which only serves to make his heady sex appeal more dangerous. Yet there’s more behind his façade meant to charm and devastate, a shared, hidden knowledge between us that leaves me swirling in the molten blue and green of his captivating gaze.

Like that moment I first saw him at the Briar visitation table, and he looked right into me, disarming me and weakening my defenses.

I never stood a chance.

“Welcome back, Dr. St. James,” Kallum says, failing to suppress a devious grin. Even his formal address sounds suggestive in his deep baritone. The way the syllables of my name curl around his tongue, the offending muscle might as well be forked. “You look recovered.”

The innuendo to my recovered memories is delivered with a conspiratorial wink before his clashing gaze touches on my skirt. Where I felt nothing but repelled by Riddick’s obvious perusal, I’m a tangle of heat and yearning as Kallum drinks me in.

“I’m healing up fine. Thank you for noticing, Professor Locke.” I intentionally glide my palms along my hips, earning a smoldering smile from him that pops the slight dimple in his cheek. I lock my arms around my midsection, afraid of my own body and the loss of control when he’s this close.

I feel on display, as if everyone in this room can see the truth of us.

More concerning is the fact that I suddenly don’t give a damn.

As I was in debriefing for most of last night, and Kallum spent majority of today conferring with his lawyer, we haven’t been in contact since we parted at the crime scene.

His tongue deliberately chases the curled seam of his lips. There’s so much deviant promise held in his heated eyes before he mercifully directs his gaze to the interrogation room. I know he’s recalling what transpired there, and the following moments that led to Alister’s attack on me.

Even after he delivered his retribution on the agent, I can sense the lingering ripple of anger as a muscle tics along his tight jaw.

He leans down close to my ear, and I shiver at his intimate proximity. “Did you wear that infernal skirt to fuck with me, little Halen?”

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