Wrong Kind of Love

By the time we dump my gun and the body and get back to Elysium, the deep reds and oranges of the sunset paint the sky. “How many days do you think until his body surfaces?”

“Maybe three, four.” There are about thirty ways to make sure that body never sees the light of day again, but if Euan and Tor both show up dead, Tom will assume I killed them. And killing his nephew… that should be enough of a distraction that I can get Tor out of here without him ever realizing she’s not really dead. “And as for her, you’re planting the body tonight?”

“Yep. I’ll find it on patrol first thing in the morning...already talked to the coroner.”

My head wants to explode from the mountain of shit that keeps piling up. I slap a hand over the roof of the patrol car, then turn and head toward the club.

Marney’s cackle fills the room. “Not lying,” he says. “Son of a bitch called me and told me to have the fire extinguisher ready. Smoke was coming outta the hood when he pulled into the drive.” He’s talking about me to—I round the corner of the entranceway and stop because Tor’s sitting at the bar, back to me, but I can still see the drink in her hand.

“Anyone with that little self-preservation should definitely be dead by now,” she says.

“He’s like a damn cat. Got himself about nine lives. And by my calculations, he’s got two left.”

I step out of the shadows, and Marney’s smile fades a little. “What the hell is she doing out here?”

“You told me to watch her….”

Tor whirls around on the stool. “Oh, you’ve deigned to grace us with your presence at last.”

“Deigned?” I need to tape her mouth shut evidently because every time she opens it with that damn accent, my dick gets hard.

Marney snickers, folding his arms over his chest on a proud grin. “She’s all right. Little bit of a firecracker.”

Oh, she’s a firecracker, all right. Frowning at him, I head through the maze of empty tables and pull her from the stool. “There’s a missing person’s reports on her ass, Marney.”

“Ah, now, calm down.”

Tor’s soft fingers brush my neck. It catches me off guard, and I grab her wrist. “Is that blood?” she whispers, our gazes locking.

My life is crumbling around me. There are eight hundred things I should be thinking about right now besides the fact that she had been planning a life with her shitass boyfriend I just killed. I should be concerned with how I’m going to get out of this tangled mess, not whether or not she loved him, not whether she’ll grieve his death? My gaze drops to her plump lips, and my thoughts shift from jealousy to need. She’s like a drug, one I haven’t even tried but already has me in the throes of addiction, one that blocks out all sense of rationality…

“What did you do, Jude?”

Made a fucking mess. “We need to go,” I say, dropping her hand and taking my keys from my pocket. And I don’t miss the look Marney throws me as we head out of the bar.

_____

Two days. It’s been two days since local investigators found the charred remains of a girl the coroner identified as Victoria Deveaux in the junkyard on the Northside of Dayton. And I still haven’t told her to leave. Instead, I’ve spent the past forty-eight hours telling myself it’s because the ID Caleb had made for her is shit. It’s not.

She’s still here because I have a problem. I want her—I dream about fucking her, I beat off to the thought of it in the shower, and as screwed up as it is, I enjoy waking up with her wrapped around me like a damn vine. The reason I haven’t told her to go yet is that I’m a selfish bastard.

I push the ID to the side of my empty coffee mug and bury my face in my hands. I don’t want to let her go, and no matter how much she may feel like it, she’s not mine to keep. Thirty minutes and two more cups of coffee later, I’m still debating with myself when Tor comes into the kitchen. Bed hair and a wrinkled T-shirt. Sleep shorts that I bought her that hit right below the curve of her ass. I buy her things. She sleeps in my shirts. This is routine now, and there's not one damn thing about this that should be routine. She doesn’t belong here, and it’s becoming harder and harder for me to see that. My dick hardens when she pushes up on her toes to grab a mug, and those shorts rise just enough for me to see the tan line on her cheek. It’s more than out of control at this point.