Page 107 of Sinners Atone
He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. The people-pleaser in me hopes it’s to hide a smirk. The thought of making the Boogeyman smile, or dare I say it—laugh,injects a dose of delirium into my bloodstream.
Silence bubbles in the thin strip of dark separating our lights. The tip of his cigarette crackles with every inhale; the timers of our respective heaters tick over, out-of-sync. I scrape at the wall and fuss over the sequins stitched to my dress. Trying to do something, anything, to make it less obvious that I’m gawping at him sideways.
Eventually, he flicks the butt toward the pile of others, and when he looks up at me again, his eyes are rimmed with that familiar cold disdain.
“You really are the Good Samaritan, huh?”
It sounds like an insult, but before I can feel the sting, his heat lamp clicks off and plunges him into darkness.
My stomach plummets, but my pulse climbs. Silence crackles in each second that passes, and I hold my breath, the sickest, darkest part of me hoping he doesn’t turn the lamp back on.
Fists clenched, I stare into the void from beneath the safety of my own lamp. There’s nothing but the hiss of rain and the tremble of my heartbeat.
Taking a step sideways would be a terrible mistake.
I do it anyway.
Another step brings me into the path of the night’s chill. Another, and the darkness swallows the tips of my heels, my legs, and then the whole of me.
Even the icy rain sizzling on my bare back couldn’t make me cold; the heat licking up my chest is too hot. It radiates from his body, the tension, thethrillof it all.
When he finally speaks, his voice drags through the void, rougher than gravel.
“Do you invade every man’s space?”
“Do you want to hear it’s just you?”
That slipped from my lips like melted butter and I don’t regret a single word. Being in the dark with this man islike drinking liquor. It loosens my tongue, strips me of my inhibitions.
Silence.It sends me spinning. It rushes straight to my head, steals all my oxygen, and any ounce of decorum I have left.
“I knew you had a crush on me.” It comes out in a breathless, frantic whisper. “Oh, my God. Iknewit.”
“Do I look like the type of man who’d have a crush on a girl who has a lip gloss for every day of the week?” he grunts.
My laugh is warped and manic. “What kind of girl only has seven lip glosses?”
A dry huff of amusement dances down my sternum and coils between my breasts. There’s no insult on this earth, thinly veiled or not, that could rip this high away. It’s too late: his silence was too long and too loud, I’ve already snatched it up and saved it to obsess over later.
A lick of heat brushes over my cheek. It skims across my jaw and hardens into a touch on the corner of my mouth.
Every nerve ending in my body turns toward that single point of contact. They vibrate as his finger carves a line of fire along my bottom lip.
Oh, God.My jaw falls slack, and I let out a desperate, ragged breath. I’d fear I was hallucinating if it weren’t for the faint taste of tobacco on his fingerprint. I’ve never had a craving for nicotine, butChrist,the taste of secondhand smoke is enough to turn me into an addict.
His question comes out thick, dripping with restraint and something darker. “When’s your date?”
What?
Oh, right. David the tadpole. I forget his existence on the best of nights, let alone when I’m five inches from Gabriel Visconti’s six-pack and precisely zero inches from his touch. He’s the last person I want to think about right now. Hell, I don’t want to think about anything else at all.
In the light, I’d never be brave enough to act like this. I don’t recognize this version of me: I’m all heat and hedonism instead of self-preservation and common sense.
Maybe that’s why I tilt forward, just enough to feel my next breath clash with his own.
“Why? Trying to figure out when I have space in my schedule?”
He tugs on my bottom lip so hard my thighs clench. “So I know when to free up my own.”
