Page 26 of Lawless
My eyes widened. "Ribeye like the steak?" Fresh meat, especially red meat, was incredibly expensive and hard to come by.
"No, like the ribs with eyes," he teased. "Of course the steak."
"Who'd you have to kill for that?"
"No one. This time." His green eyes danced with humor, but those words slapped me with cold, hard reality.
He was a killer. And unlike men conscripted for the border wars like my father, he was comfortable joking about killing people. It didn't haunt him like it did normal men.
If nothing else, Reaper did live up to his name.
"Get cleaned up. Noelle will loan you a hairbrush, I'm sure. We'll see you there."
Ah yes, now was the perfect time to remember I just rolled out of bed and looked like a hot mess while being sensually massaged by a murderer's hands.
"We?" I repeated. "The, uh, whole club will be there?"
"Yes." His green gaze slid away from me as he turned and began a slow walk back to his study. "But so will Noelle and the old ladies of my men. The women will make you feel safe and welcome."
I watched his back retreat and he disappeared without another word.
Ten
MARIPOSA
Istared at myself in Noelle's vanity mirror as she ran a brush through my hair, which nearly hit my waist at this point.
"You lucky bitch, I'm so jealous," Noelle mused. "I wish I had hair like yours. Mine always starts breaking off when it hits a certain length. I can't let it grow past my tits for the life of me."
"Seriously?" I looked up at her reflection. "At least your color is way more fun than mine." There was nothing special about my hair, as far as I could tell. It was just a plain, normal brown.
"Oh, please," Noelle huffed. "This shit's from a box. My natural color is a dishwater dirty blonde. At least yours has some richness to it."
"Really? I figured your hair would be dark like Reaper's."
"Nah." She sprayed some kind of fruity-smelling mist over my hair before continuing with her brushing. "Aside from our eye color, no one would know we're related. We're actually half siblings. Same mom, different dads, not that it mattered to us. Daren had a different dad, too—“
She stopped talking abruptly, her face hardening as she brushed through the last of my bedhead tangles.
"Had?" I pressed gently. "Is he the one you guys lost?"
"I shouldn't talk about it," she muttered, tidying up her products on the vanity. "Reaper gets pissed if I so much as think about him. You ready?"
Deciding not to press anymore, I returned my gaze to myself in the mirror. Noelle turned my tangled, dried-out rat's nest into soft waves cascading over my shoulders. The brown locks framing my face, I looked more like my Latino dad's side of the family. The Southwestern sun had darkened my skin to a medium-olive, and my now-moisturized lips were redder thanks to Noelle's tinted lip balm. Only my hazel, not quite brown, eyes alluded to something else in my ancestry.
"Yeah. Thanks, Noelle." I allowed a tiny smile at my reflection. "I look like a different person."
"I knew there was a cutie-patootie hiding under there," she grinned. "Let's go. I'm dying for a steak dinner."
Following her lead down the ridiculous staircase, which no longer made my thighs scream as badly, we went out the front door and walked across the cul-de-sac to a small path through the neighborhood.
"Where is the barbeque?" I asked her, hoping my nervousness didn't show. "At someone else's house?"
"Nah, you'll see," she answered. "There's a central clubhouse where they hold church and any kind of parties or meetings for the whole 'hood. Did I tell you what this place is called, by the way?"
"No, what?"
She smiled at me over her shoulder. “Sheol.”
