Chapter 13
GRAYSON
Thank fuck Emme had stopped crying. The installed backdoor on the phone app worked too well. Hearing her vomiting, even if it was distant, had been painful, as had the half a night of her crying.
I put down the beer, watching the same sun rise that she would be, remembering when I had her strung up here, at the end of the patio. And yet I had let her go.
At six thirty, Axl arrived bearing two coffees and a brown paper bag. The packet spilled open, wafting the scent of crunchy croissants in the air. Those French delicacies came from a patisserie that had set up recently in Beddingford, a small town between my house and his.
The bastard was trying to get back into my good books.
“No warning text?”
He slumped into the lounger and flopped his hand to and fro. “That I was bringing you good food? Nope. I know I spooked you yesterday. This is me bearing gifts, apologizing.”
“The fuck.” Morosely, I sighed, then reached for the coffee.
“Where is she?”
“I let her go.” I braced myself for the onslaught of accusations.
“I know that.”
“Why ask then?”
“I was testing to see if you’d lie.”
I bit into a croissant, took a sip of coffee. It was venturing into lukewarm, but I wasn’t going to get up to microwave it.
“She was crying so much I considered calling an ambulance.”
I shut my eyes. “Backdoor app?”
“Of course.”
I should have known he would do that because I had. Though Axl might have ulterior motives—or more ulterior than mine were. “Are you stalking her, too?”
“Stalking is a dirty word, Grayson. I wanted to know if she called the cops, and my friends would want to know.”
I took a full gulp this time, swallowed the creamy flavor, and wondered if his friends could or would have any of us exterminated. “How deep are you in with them? You said you’d only visited once, before.”
“Some of them, like Wolfman, are ex-work associates. Some are friends, but not like you and me. I’d murder for you and bury the shovel for you.” He waved his cup. “Eat the shovel even? If you asked nicely.”
I grunted then carefully placed my cup on the small table. That was how I would have described us, too, before Emme and the party. “The things they were doing to some women, and what you suggested, were way past what I can handle.”
No macho bullshit here, not between us. I guess I was craving the old Axl.
“Like I said, it was consensual, even if extreme. And you are the man who kidnapped her.”
He had a point there, or he would have if I hadn’t lied to him. But I didn’t remember him stating so clearly that it was all consensual.
It depends on your definition of consensual nonconsent. That was it.
“With Emme, the truth is I was trying to mindfuck both of you, because I wanted her.” He shrugged. “It came out wrong.”
So he would swear it was all consensual. I chewed the inside of my cheek. When do I tell him that what I had with Emme was that too? Never, maybe. Ditto, her, because it was the scary, anonymous stranger who made her go shaky, wide-eyed, and wet.
“What about Wolfman?”
“He was an asshole. They booted him out after that.”
“Okay.”
“Are we good then?” He twitched an eyebrow, waited.
“We…are. Until you fuck up again.”
“So I can stick my dick in Emme now,” he drawled.
“What? No! No you can’t stick your dick in her.” I sat forward to make my point. “No more kidnapping anyone for either of us. Like none.” I drum-roll tapped the armrest of my lounger. “The last one didn’t go so well.”
“None? Okay. Does that mean you’re giving up the girl, because I sensed a certain thing going on there, between you two. As well as a thing between me and her.” He grinned, taunting me as he balled up his cup and tossed it toward a planter with nothing in it, scored a bullseye basket. “Yes!”
I stood and strolled a few yards down the patio, staring at where we’d had her strung up with her arms in the armbinder.
“Give her up?” I turned that concept over. We had her phone tapped. Knew where she worked and lived. Knew her kinks. “I guess not. However, you are still banned from her. Go near her, and I get out my castration knife.”
“A bit harsh.”
“Yes.”
He joined me. “You should stop stalking her through her phone. There doesn’t seem much use in letting her go then chasing her.”
“Well.” I shrugged. “If she does contact the cops, this way we get a warning. I might want to keep tabs on her for a while—”
“Visit her apartment and sniff her panties?”
That made me laugh. For the first time in a day, I felt our friendship linking us. It was on shaky ground but repairable.
As for Emme, I had this strange hankering to ask her out for a date then flip the script and make her do something disturbing to show her I could. I had the keys to her psyche. I knew what made her tick, and purr, and come, hard.
What I wasn’t sure of was how to approach her.
“What are you planning this week? Aside from listening in on her activities.”
“Go for walks, fishing, the club. Drink a lot. Play some games. Want to join me?”
“I will if it fits in with work. Would you like me to suggest some work to you? I can refer some people?”
“Not yet. I want to keep my schedule open.” I squatted and picked up a few strands of her blond hair that must have been sheared off by the ropes when I tied or untied them. Forensics would have a ball here, as Emme had insinuated.
“I have to go hit the office.” His phone buzzed.
He’d sounded worried, so I looked up and found he was slipping his cellphone into his pocket.
“I don’t understand why you let her go.”
“Me neither.” Absentmindedly, I rubbed the strands in my finger and thumb, adding as an afterthought, “Maybe so I can see the real Emme, and let her see me?”
“Interesting, and likely to get you arrested the second you set foot in her apartment building.”
I was still thinking when I heard his car drive off.