One of the biker babes who’d been coming by to feed the cat and check on the bird had left a lamp on in the living room and the lights on in the kitchen. The locks on the front and back doors didn’t appear to be tampered with, and there was no sign of an intruder otherwise.
It was officially safe for me to leave her in the house and wait outside in the cold dark like I always did until someone else could take over watching her.
“All clear,” I told Bea when she snuck her head inside around the door. “Get in here.”
She beamed at me as if searching the house for her was some kinda heroic deed. Then I watched her actually skip into her house and sing out for Sampson, who I hadn’t spotted at all in the house on my run-through.
A minute later, the old one-eyed albino cat swaggered out from the hall, tail high as he meandered over for love from his woman. He stopped mid-step when he caught sight of me and then deliberately turned farther away from me as he continued on his way to Bea.
“Cat’s got good taste,” I grunted, lingering in the doorway because some bizarre conviction told me if I ventured farther into the pink and white space, it would infect me even more with this sense of wrongness I felt gnawing inside me.
Bea tipped her gaze up through her long lashes as she crouched to pet Sampson. “He does. It takes him a while to warm up to people because he was abused as a kitten, but when he decides you’re worth it, he’s all sweetness.”
I raised a brow, face cold. “That supposed to be some kinda metaphor?”
Her wide-eyed blink was all innocence. “I don’t know what you mean. Now, I’m frozen. Why don’t we have some hot chocolate to warm up?”
The suggestion exploded out of her and ended with a little giggle. She stood, moving into the kitchen without waiting for confirmation from me.
Hot chocolate.
I’d never had that shit in my entire life, and I doubted I’d like it. Sweets were not a staple of my diet. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had anything sweet, discounting the sugary, sticky juices spilling from Bea’s pink pussy.
I licked my lips unconsciously.
“Not gonna drink that shit,” I called to her, staying in place at the door.
“I make it with those little marshmallows,” she refuted as if that made some kinda difference.
She was visible from the open concept kitchen but not clearly from where I stood. I moved closer, drawn to her even as she hummed a Christmas tune under her breath. It was only late November, and she already had a box of seasonal decorations labeled in her neat, curling script out beside the coffee table. Of course, Bea loved Christmas. She loved any reason to celebrate life and be grateful for those things she loved in such abundance.
Which included me.
The soles of my feet itched, my hands clammy and twitching where they were fisted at my sides. I felt agitated by some electric current that stretched between the two of us, crackling in the air, fizzing in my blood. I needed to unplug. I needed space, space, space.
Yet I didn’t take it. Instead, I moved into the living room to get a better look at it and Bea beyond in the kitchen, shaking her hips as she stirred something on the stove. Her bird, Delilah, was on her shoulder, taken from the large cage in the corner. Together, they cooed softly to each other.
How the fuck had I ended up obsessed with this girl?
She was something out of a fairy tale. The only role I should have played in her life was as the villain, but somehow, she’d cast me as the hero. How fucked up was that?
“Why the names?” I asked, surprised by my own question.
I wasn’t curious by nature and definitely not intrusive. But I wanted every inch of Bea’s body and mind to be owned by me. I wanted to be able to answer any question about her better even than she could. Not to lord my knowledge over her, but to find some kind of fucked-up comfort in it. I wanted to hold everything Bea was to me like a blanket when I was inevitably alone again, in the dark and in the cold of my own necessary solitude.
Bea stopped messing about in the kitchen long enough to shoot me a surprised, happy little smile. She reached a finger up to stroke the dove’s white head gingerly, and the bird, lucky bitch, leaned into the stroking eagerly.
“They were sinners in the Bible,” she explained as she went back to warming milk on the stovetop. “But I think they were misunderstood. Sometimes, it seems like we only get one version of a story in the Bible, and I’ve always wondered about Sampson and Delilah, if they had their own voices, what kind of story they might tell.”