Page 10 of Roma King
“No other sound whatsoever? No voices, no music, no engine sounds, or…I don’t know. Anything that might give us a lead?”
I close my eyes, reliving the conversation again. It’s all there, floating just below the surface of my memory, so vivid and so clear that it feels like Corey’s whispering into my ear again, spilling his secrets, telling me that a man has come to his home and his brother won’t wake up. “No. I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything. Believe me…if I could help you find the guy who killed Corey’s brother, I would in a heartbeat.”
Detective Holmes nods, setting his jaw. He was clearly optimistic when we started our conversation, but there’s nothing left of that optimism now. I just crushed whatever hope he brought into this office with him. Blowing hard down his nose, he rises from his chair and bows his head. “Yeah. This guy obviously needs to pay for killing Jamie. But right now, we’re more concerned with finding Corey. It’s been well over seventy-two hours, and typically, once a kid’s been missing for this long—”
I watch Detective Holmes’s mouth move with a sick kind of fascination. He speaks for at least a full minute, but his words are lost on me. I hear nothing he says; my ears roaring with the rushing of my blood and with a wall of white noise that prevents me from registering anything else. He shakes my hand, and I mutter my thanks, or maybe I apologize to him again for not being more helpful. Hell, I could have just wished him a merry Christmas and I wouldn’t know it. My body’s on auto pilot until the man has walked out of the office, and his back has disappeared down the hallway and out of sight.
Slowly, I turn to Roger. “Missing? That little boy ismissing?”
Roger picks up his coffee mug and stares into it morosely. It must be empty. He’s a nervous coffee drinker. “The EMTs didn’t find anyone at the property when they arrived. The deceased boy was in the living room. They searched the rest of the place after they’d established that there was nothing they could do for Jamie. There was no one there.”
“But that’s impossible. I heard them arrive. I heard them kicking in the door.”
Roger’s brows bank together. “The EMT’s report said the door was already open when they arrived. If you heard someone kicking in the door, then…” He sighs, still squinting into his mug. “Perhaps you did hear something useful after all, Zara.”
4
PASHA
FIREFLY
Her hands are small.
The roadmap of veins under her skin, tinged blue and green, capture my attention, refusing to release it as I trace my fingers over them. She is a work of wonder. Her body is like nothing I’ve ever beheld before—perfectly proportioned, all gentle curves, the lines of her artfully rendered—and I can feel my dick stirring in my pants as I trail my fingers up, up, up, along the slender line of her arm, my heart thumping like a kick-drum as I reach her collarbone. Her breath catches in her throat as I stroke the side of her neck, and I begin to realize how absolutely fucked I am.
This woman is dangerous.
I transitioned from boy to man a long damn time ago, but never before have I experienced anything close to the surge of testosterone that streams through me as I look down into her hazel eyes. Stunning eyes. Not wholly brown, or blue, or green. A myriad of colors and hues that seem to shift and change with her mood, depending on how she’s feeling. Right now, they’re predominantly blue, the color of cornflowers and Delphinium. A dark, rich brown rims her irises, throwing the blue into contrast, and I see the desire building in her as she stares back at me.
Her voice is sad when she speaks, though. “Oh, Pasha. You’re inlovewith me.” From the way she says this, it seems as if she’s only just realized this, and she’s surprised.
“Of course I am,” I answer. “I always have been. I always will be.”
“But…I’m a ghost,” she whispers.
I touch the tips of my fingers to her mouth. “You’re real to me.” How could she not be? Everything about her screams ‘I’m alive!’ Her hair is like tamed fire, a deep, burnished auburn, shot through with enough copper, gold and cinnamon to set the world alight. I bury my nose into it, inhaling the floral yet sharp smell of her, filling my lungs with her scent, as if it’s the only thing that can sustain me.
“I want you so bad, Firefly,” I whisper into her ear. “I need you wet. I need you panting. I need to feel your pussy tighten as I push inside you. I need it more than anything else in the world.”
“More than air?” she whispers.
“Yes. More than air.”
“More than food?”
“Yes.”
“More than water?”
I nod.
“More than sunlight? Or the wind? Or the moon hanging over the mountains at night?”
She knows how much these things mean to me. How my soul would shrivel up and die without them. I cup her face in the palms of my hands, and I press my mouth to hers; she tastes like the dew on spring grass. “Yes, Firefly. I need it more than life itself. I need you to give yourself to me.”
The sound of her laughter, laced with hunger and lust, nearly takes me out at the fucking knees. “What are you going to give me in return?”
“All that I am. Everything. And nothing, depending on your perspective.”
