Page 1 of Blood & Kisses

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“Have you been following me?” I ask, that charming smiling face as he checks the cartridge of the handgun he sold me and empties the bullets into his hand.

“Listen, babe, if you want to come over on the dark side, you need to be a little more discreet and have eyes at the back of your head,” he states, holding the gun's barrel in his hand and giving it back to me handle first.

“What do you mean?” I ask, taking the handgun from his hand and stepping back from that alluring cologne and dimpled smile.

“If it weren’t for me following you and guarding your back, you would’ve been caught,” Blake sits that toned ass on the edge of my bed. “There were witnesses, Rae.”

“I was in disguise,” I argue, swallowing over a lump in my throat, fearing where this conversation will lead and what he’ll do with the information. He’s a thief. Therefore, is he going to blackmail me with this? Did he take pics of me killing Coach?

“Running to your little yellow car, Rae, with the rego plate easy to read,” he rubs his unshaven jaw with his knuckles.

“It was dark,” I argue back.

“Not that dark. I could see it easily from where I was positioned,” he pats the spaces next to him for me to sit, but I rebel against him and walk to the window instead. “Why did you shoot your ex-coach?”

I open my mouth to give him a vague answer, but a solid knock at the door interrupts me. It’s early in the morning, so who could it be? As Blake stands up and offers to get it, I realize he knows exactly who is standing behind the wood.

He swings the door, and a tall, striking, athletic man strides in as if he owns the world, and the wind gushes out of me in shock.

“Great,” I snap, folding my arms across my chest, feeling that Judgment Day had come far too soon. “I suppose you’re going to tell your father.”

Cormac frowns as his size engulfs the small space that is my entire tiny apartment. “No,” he answers bluntly as he inspects the kitchen, glances into my bathroom, then out onto the balcony. It took him only three strides to go from one side of the room to the other. “He already knows.”

My body tenses as I imagine being arrested and put on trial for murder, and these two men are prosecution witnesses helping to put me in prison. I shouldn’t have trusted them. That was a stupid move on my part, and I shouldn’t have let them get too close. “How…” I’m about to ask: How long have you known? But I no longer want to incriminate myself, so I clam up.

“Has she told you?” Cormac asks Blake.

“No, she was about to answer when you knocked on the door,” Blake answers and turns to address me with those long dark eyelashes and dancing brown eyes. It’s all a game to them.

Cormac directs his ominous, narrowed glare at me. “You shot my coach?” He looks angry, but his tone is almost amused, as if I ate his ice cream, not that I just shot a highly acclaimed coach, who happens to be his coach.

“I’m pleading the 5th amendment,” I state stubbornly, and Blake’s grin widens.

“I told you we should’ve taken her under our wing earlier,” he addresses Cormac as if I’m not in the room. “With correct training, she could’ve been dynamite.”

“Don’t you mean a rocket pocket?” Blake questions mockingly. “She’s hardly lethal.”

“Excuse me? I’m right here in front of you,” I bite, wondering how I will escape this…whatever this is.

Blake places his hand behind his ear sardonically. “Did you hear something?”

“Must’ve been the whistling wind since someone who pleads the fifth wouldn’t speak,” Cormac adds to the mockery of me.

“Can you please leave? And it’s not a question, it’s a demand,” I seethe, standing my ground.

“No,” Cormac snaps as the muscles in his smooth jaw pulsate from clenching. “You need to tell us why you shot Coach.”

“And we’re not leaving until you do,” Blake adds.

“What are you going to do about it?” I ask apprehensively, slightly confused by which direction they’re taking this situation in.

“Depends,” Blake says as sirens bleed outside and my body tenses, “on you.” He walks to the window and peers out.

“What do you mean?” I need clarification from him so I know where I stand.

“Tell us why you shot Coach,” Cormac grills again, refusing to drop it.

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