Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
HIM
“Stop fucking squirming,” I grunted, my eyes still squeezed shut as I tugged on the covers and flipped over onto my other side, dragging more than half the blanket with me. The soft, fluffy blanket.
“Sorry,” a voice mumbled back, and I shot upright on the bed. I’d almost forgotten I wasn’t alone and that my mask was still on the nightstand where I’d left it.
I reached out an arm, snatched it up, and shoved it over my head.
I looked fucking ridiculous: bare-assed, covered in tattoos, with nothing on but a white piece of hollowed-out plastic strapped to my face.
But here we were. Glued at the hip, in some Twilight Zone episode of the Odd Couple where my face would give me away but my cock wouldn’t.
It shouldn’t have mattered, considering she’d seen it last night.
(Both my face and my cock.) Either way, I had to kill her.
I was going to kill her. Just felt like a waste after all that effort I’d put in to saving her.
Like flipping a puzzle off the kitchen table the moment you were done putting it together.
I stretched out my sore limbs until each of my shoulders made that popping sound, and then stood from the bed with a groan. I was already fucked. I’d been due back on the unit hours ago. Might as well be fucked and fed.
“What d’ya want for breakfast?” I called out from the door, one hand braced on the frame. I didn’t bother turning around. My ass was up for grabs too, I guess.
“I’m not hungry. Thank you,” she replied.
“I didn’t ask if you were fucking hungry, Jules.”
“Jules?” she parroted.
“Yeah, those eyes of yours look like sapphires. Besides, Juliet seems too formal for the guy who saved your fucking life.”
She was crying into her pillow. Trying to hide it but I could hear her. “I wanted to die, though,” she whispered.
“And I wanted to be the one to kill ya,” I muttered to myself. “Can’t all get what we want, now can we?”
Obviously, she could hear me just as clearly. And that had her full-on sobbing. Which didn’t make sense to fucking me. If she wanted to die so goddamn bad, what did it matter who was the one doing it? I mean, it mattered to me. It was kinda my thing, but why the fuck should it matter to her?
This was exactly why I liked my women quiet. They were a lot easier to deal with when they weren’t talking. When they couldn’t talk.
I counted to five in my head, like all the quacks taught me to do—shit didn’t work, by the way. Not when it came to my “homicidal urges” but the brief pause did keep me from yelling at her again.
“I’m making eggs. Tell me how you prefer ?em done or you’re getting ?em how I prefer ?em done.”
“Scrambled…” she said, and it took everything in my power to not say thank fuck. Trying not to kill someone was worse than pulling teeth, and I’d pulled out plenty of those.
“What else?”
“Thank you?” she said it like it was a question, and I dragged a hand down my face.
“No, Jules. I mean, anything else to eat… or drink. You want coffee or something?” I heard a rustling of the sheets and spun back around to find her trying to swing herself off the bed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
She froze. Her wide eyes dropping to my limp cock, traveling up the lines and grooves of my abs—probably hitching on the occasional tattoo—before landing on the plastic covering my face.
“I, ah, I have to go to the store. I didn’t buy more coffee ?cause, well, you know. And I’m almost out of juice.”
I shot out an arm, gesturing to the bed.
“Keep your ass right there and give me your phone.” She looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to question me, and we sure as fuck didn’t have all morning for her to get the courage to do that, so I added, “I’m guessing you got one of those delivery apps. We’ll order you some groceries.”