Page 69 of No Small Sin

He rubbed the spot, then led me over to sit side by side on the bed. “Do you really think I’d do that without removing the important shit first? Like I would burn yourbooks. I still need the sequel to that sexy man-meat sandwich book of yours. Of course, I had to savethat.” He leveled me with a stare and I fought back laughter. “I have some other things for you too,” he grinned, waving a thick envelope in front of my face.

I was so excited to see him again, I’d missed that he was holding it. “What is it?” I asked.

He dumped the contents on my bed and I eyed the papers suspiciously.

Birth certificate, social security card, passport…

I picked up the driver’s license, eyes scanning over the small card.

My mouth fell open when I saw my own face in the corner, but none of the information printed on it belonged to me.

Different city, state…name.

“Wolffbrandt?” I read the last name aloud, a bit in disbelief.

“Yes, cuore mio,” Beck responded, tugging the hard plastic from my hand and replacing it with another form of license.A marriage license. “Wolffbrandt.”

He tipped my mouth closed, leaning down to place a chaste kiss there.

“I’m so confused,” I told him when he pulled away.

“Let me explain, then…wife.” His eyes glinted with mirth. “You’re dead now. The preliminary results of your falsified autopsy will be released to the police sometime in the next 24 hours, by which time you and I will be long gone.”

There was abodyin my house when it had burned. I should have known.

“Falsified?”

“I’m close friends with the coroner. Not that he had much to go on with what was left of the charred corpse.” He seemed proud of that.

“This is insane.” I really didn’t know how to react to any of this. How was I supposed to just pack up and start a whole new fuckinglife?“We’remarried?”

He grinned. “As far as I’m concerned.”

It took everything in me not to jump his fucking bones. But I had more questions. “Where are we going?”

“Where do you want to go?” He acted as if it was no big deal — as if the world was our goddamn oyster — when the reality of it was anythingbutthat.

I tried to think, but every thought overlapped with another and the inside of my brain was even more of a hot fucking mess than usual. “Oh, my god. I need to dye my hair or something. Tattoos? I should get tattoos. Do we have to leave the country? I don’t know if I’m ready to moveabroad, Beck. Other countries are a whole different world. I’m barely functioning as a productive member of society now, how am I ever going to learn a whole new way of living somewhere else? This is just crazy. Wait. Dexter faked his death. And he just moved north. Maybe we can just move sou…”

He slapped his hand over my mouth, cutting off the flow of my words. They’d spilled out so quickly that another sentence began before I’d ended the previous one.

He pulled me onto his lap, his hand still covering the lower half of my face. “One,” he began. “Your last several photos that were made available to the public show you with a gorgeous sleeve tattoo.” He traced a pattern over the length of my arm. “A tattoo that is no longer visible on this delectable skin of yours,” he noted.

He removed his hand from me and I opened my mouth to speak. “Two,” he cut me off abruptly. “Dexter is afictional character, love. This is our real life, so I do think we should at least consider a new country. But we can talk about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said meekly, still very rattled.

“And lastly,” he gave me a hard look, running his free hand through my long hair. “You’re not fucking touching this gorgeous black mane.”

I gave him a small smile, grateful because fuck knew I didn’t want to.

“So. I guess we’re doing this, then.”

“We are.”

“I don’t have much of a life to leave behind, but I have to admit I’ll miss my friends. I only just met Hunt, but I really like her, Beck.”

“She can visit. We’ll work it out.”

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