Page 55 of Bourbon & Blood

“Thank you,” I said. He got in first, plugging the drain and held out a hand to me. I took it and stepped over the high edge. He got down and pulled me down gently between his powerful thighs, wrapping his large, muscular arms around me and pulling me back against his chest.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. He smoothed his hands up my arms as the tub filled, gathering my hair, and twisting it around and around, up off my shoulders, tying it in on itself into a secure knot at the top of my head.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked softly as he dipped his hands into the water filling the deep copper clawfoot.

The water gently steamed around us and he was silent a while before he made a sound.

“Mm?” he asked, as though he’d been transfixed and not paying attention, then saying “Watching you,” when his mind finally caught up to what I’d asked.

“H-how long?” I asked.

“How long, what?” he asked, pressing along my neck and out over my shoulders with his slick hands, massaging the remaining tension in me away.

“How long and how much have you watched me?” I asked carefully.

“All the time you lived across the club. Some since you moved,” he answered honestly.

“Why?” I asked.

“Guess I’m obsessed,” he answered.

I covered my face with my hands, running warm water over it, my mind reeling.

None of this was normal. The whole thing was unreal. The feelings I was having a riot of confusion… I mean, I was sitting in a bathtub with someone openly admitting they werestalkingme.

Like, holy shit; it struck me. I had just let mystalkerfuck me in his bed, and all in a bid to save my missing best friend. This wasn’t real, thiscouldn’t be real… but it was, and I felt like laughing. I felt like laughing until I cried from the wild absurdity of it all. The most absurd thing of all that left me questioning my sanity?

Just how much I fuckingliked it…

“I don’t know what to think of all of this,” I confessed as he continued to rub my back, digging his thumbs into trigger points of knotted muscle along my spine and along my neck.

“You ain’t gotta worry about a thing, cher. We’ll find her. You’re mine now, and you ain’t gotta worry about a thing.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly through my nose and out through my mouth.

“I don’t know anything about you,” I said. “How is that anything to base a relationship on – which is totally crazy! Like, this is not how these things are supposed to work.”

He pulled me back again, his arms over my chest and kissed my temple. It was like it was completely natural for him. Like he was perfectly relaxed and, no pun intended, at home.

I didn’t know what bothered me more – the circumstances of my being here, or the fact that his touch was so good, so soothing, that by this point – even knowing that I shouldn’t, I felt totally at ease.

… I wasglad.

Who in their right mind found themselvesgratefulfor striking a deal with their stalker? For agreeing to be his in exchange for finding their best friend?

I felt like I should feel all wrong, and it worried me that I didn’t. I felt like I was maybe crazy.

I mean, only a crazy person would actuallylikebeing here, right? I had to be insane for feeling safe and good, for this feeling sorightwhen I knew that the man who held me in his arms so gently was dangerous and clearly batshit fucking crazy to begin with for stalking me. I had to be some kind of batshit insane myself, for knowing that I cuddled with someone that was both capable of being as sweet as he’d been when we were alone together, as well as incredibly… well… violent.

Was he, though?a little voice in the back of my head questioned.

I mean, I had to imagine that he was. the Voodoo Bastards were notorious, and he wasn’t just one of them, he was theirleader. Thathadto mean he was capable of great violence even though I hadn’t witnessed it personally.

Hadn’t I? I mean, I couldn’t remember… and hadn’t he hinted that I didn’t want to?

Something had happened to me, with him, the night that Maya had disappeared…

“What happened the night I don’t remember?” I asked again, and his arms tightened around me.

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