Page 200 of The Wicked
Silence stretched.
“So Cassie’s awake.”She broke it.
“Indeed.”
“Did you see him yet? Any valuable information he might have to pass across about the people who did this?”
I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about Casmiro.”
“Oh… What do you want to talk about?”
“Food. I think I’m hungry.”
I could hear the smile in her voice as she said,“You’re in luck. I haven’t had my dinner yet. In fact, I was about to eat when your call came in. Give me a second. I’ll be there, and you can eat me—I mean, eat with me. With me. Jesus fuck—bye.”
The line cut off abruptly, and I stared at the screen, unable to stop my lips from curling at the side.
After a few useless seconds of replaying our conversation, I fixed myself a cigar and grabbed the book by my bedside table, put on my reading glasses, and settled as I drew in a lungful of smoke.
It burned my chest, sending the breath out of me in an instant and clogging my windpipe; the feeling compelled a cough out of me.
“That’s a first,” I mused aloud, blowing out the smoke while stifling the cough.
I cleared my throat, ignoring the feeling as it subsided. Somehow, the pain the cigar caused pushed me to take another drag, expecting to feel the burn—nothing happened.
Disappointment weighed heavily on my shoulders.
I fought off the thought and focused on the book in my grip.
About forty minutes into the book, the cigar had been discarded, my hunger forgotten, and the sound of my door quietly pushing open became a background disturbance.
I looked up briefly to catch Zahra walking in.
“Your idea of a second is worrisome.”
“Shut up; I had to make sure it was safe enough to sneak out.”
I memorized the page number and then dropped the book on my bedside table.
Unintentionally, my gaze took her in, sweeping from her head to her toes and then back to her head. She was in a different silk nightgown, bloodred, with a robe over it. I watched her drop the food bag on the two-seater couch before she turned to me, her short hair brushed to curly perfection, and she watched me like a package handed to her on a platter. She was in awe for some reason. It would be quite embarrassing to admit that the look had me feeling the same way compliments made me feel—flustered.
“It’s late already, you shouldn’t be walking around the compound dressed like that,” I said, and she looked down at herself innocently.
“Dressed like what?”
“In a nightgown.”
She shrugged. “Well, I told you, it’s all silk inside my wardrobe.”
“Why do I have the urge to see your wardrobe?” I asked, and her eyes widened and sparkled beautifully in mischief, lips curling to the side in a smile as she approached the bed like she had done this particular action many times before.
“Maybe because you are a fucking weirdo,” she said; her sly smile turned genuine as she got on the bed. “And a creep with serial killer genes.”
A twitch in my cock told me I liked the way she gracefully climbed onto my bed, and how perfect she looked on it. “There’s no such thing as serial killer genes, Zahra.”
“I saw a TV show once. One of the main characters had serial killer genes.”
“Fiction.”
