Page 80 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
I want to drag my thumb across her lids and smear it all, but instead I stay where I am and take the bag from her hands. It is startlingly heavy; I hope Maude does not mind we took so much, but I’m not going to tell Karia to put anything back.
“Yo, you must be Karia. Maude told me about you before everyone else arrived.” Fleet’s voice is full of a smirk I canhearin his words.
Everyone else.I do not know who else is here, and I do not like the sound of those words.
Karia glances at him as I clench my gloved hands tighter around the bag. “And you are?” she asks, her voice polite but groggy.
My heart beats fast in my chest with her attention diverted away from me. I do not know when I started to believe she ismine,but the word seems to echo in every beat of my heart.
“Fleet.” He extends his hand to her, and I glance at his trim nails, smooth skin. Not a single wound or even a callous to be found.
Karia starts to accept his offer, but I dart my own hand out and grab her wrist, pulling her toward me.
“We can find our way to the basement,” I say quietly, turning to glare at Fleet’s dopey blue eyes as he flicks his brows up, looking from me, to Karia, his hand still awkwardly extended.
“Are you sure? It’s kinda creepy, the steps, you gotta be careful because there’s no light and—”
I smile fully at him, revealing my teeth.
He stops talking, trailing off as he takes a single step backward. His gaze flicks to Karia once more and I can see his confusion.Why are you with him? He is disgusting. You are beautiful. Come with me. I wear fucking polo shirts.
I want to choke him with his polo but finally, he turns his back on us and heads deeper into the shop, giving only one last glance before he disappears into the darkness of the store.
Karia’s pulse is beating quickly beneath my fingers on her wrist, even through the leather of my gloves.
I slowly turn to her and find she is staring up at me.
“You scared him.”
It feels as if she kicked me in the stomach with those words, despite the fact that was my intention. I clench my teeth and release her, taking a step back in my high-tops. I glance at the locked door of the shop; Maude said everyone was already gathered at this fucking dinner. I hear sirens beyond the walls, and I know we cannot leave just yet but I desperately want to.
Karia will not like my interactions with others.
Idon’t like interacting with others at all. But holing away upstairs will seem more suspicious, Karia told me, and the room isn’t ours any longer. Maude gave us enough, as is. I drop the bag by the door where it lands on the hardwoods with a heavy thud, and I don’t say anything.
In my head, Karia is pressed up against me back in bed. In my head, I am a coward for not doing what I have wanted with her for so fucking long. But the horrible ideas in my brain over the years seem so difficult to enact with the truth of her. Soft and strangely sweet and running,with me.
It was easier to drug her at the hotel. To caress her nipple with a needle. Bite her skin. Because I hadn’t seen what she would do for me then. But even with her loyalty briefly proven, I am afraid this is all a ruse, and I have just not discovered the twist yet. She cannot actually want me.
“Sullen.”
I lift my gaze to hers.
She takes a step forward, lifting her bare hand to my chest, fingers softly curled along my emerald hoodie. Her cheekbones rise as she smiles slightly, her gaze dropping to my throat.
“I like this,” she says, nodding toward the white bandana I tied around my neck. “A lot.”
I put on a white T-shirt I found in the drawers, the same gray pants I bought from the mall, but there was nothing to hide my throat. A curious collection of bandanas was in one of the smaller drawers though, and it seems to work well enough.
But I cannot tell if she is mocking me now. My throat feels dry, my pulse pounding too hard where her fingers are along my hoodie.
Her smile falters with my silence and she slowly drops her hand, glancing at the floor. “We can’t trust any of them,” she says quietly, her tone harder now. She flicks her gaze up to mine, peering at me from beneath her lashes. “Not even your girlfriend.”
At this, a warmth spreads through me that is hard to explain. Something light and overwhelming all at once.
“She isn’t my girlfriend.”I’ve never had one of those.“And I don’t trust her.”
“Yes, I know,” she says softly, her pink lips articulating each word carefully as she arches a brow. “You don’t trust anyone.” Then she turns from me, heading deeper into the store. I glance at her ass, the perfect, slender roundness of it, the mass of her hair piled haphazardly on her head, the beauty of her cervical spine peeking beneath her pink shirt.
