Chapter 8
A Parade of Shame
I wake up sprawled across Mark’s torso with morning light filtering through the trees into his bedroom.
None of the windows have curtains. I know you can’t see anything from the road, having tried and failed to do so myself, but still.
The man seems like he might have a bit of an exhibitionist kink.
I file the thought away for later. I expect it will come in useful at some point.
He’s passed out beneath me, and I study the lines of his face for a few moments, then drop my gaze to run over his body.
In the morning light, he’s very pretty and very hard.
I wonder if I could get him off before he woke up.
I want to wrap my hand around him and find out, but I know it’s a bad idea.
The police left last night after they realized who Mark was, and he signed some autographs for them.
I had no idea anyone cared about sports coaches at all—let alone that they wanted their autographs.
Once the police left, he tried to redirect the conversation back to the two of us.
However, I successfully diverted his attention to the cum dripping down my thigh, and watching him lick it off me while I ran my hands through his hair was easily as hot as anything else that happened.
I know I won’t be able to escape the conversation this morning, though, and I’m already dreading it.
On the one hand, I’m usually trying to help people resolve their issues, not give them new ones.
And I know if Mark were to find out I’m using him to gain access to his team…
Well. It wouldn’t be great. He already has trust issues, and what I’m doing is so far beyond violating his trust. I’m basically going to douse it in kerosene, light it on fire, watch it burn, and then take the ashes and throw them into the sea.
And for whatever stupid reason, he’s decided to let me in.
To trust me. Me, the one person who deserves it least.
But on the other hand, if having the conversation gets me closer to my goals and means I get to keep having the kind of sex we had last night…
Well. I won’t say no to either of those things.
It was seriously the best sex of my life.
And letting him come inside me, while definitely a stupid decision, showed me what I’ve been missing out on.
If I’m lucky, he’ll never realize I was using him, and I’ll be able to figure out a way to end things amicably.
Mark’s not an idiot, though. So the chances of that seem low.
If I didn’t need to be here, I would gather my clothes, which are still on the deck and probably soaked in dew from being there overnight, and sneak off.
His chest noticeably rises and falls, shifting my body atop his, and he opens his eyes, blinking them blearily a few times. “Good morning,” he says, and his voice is rough with sleep. “How long have you been awake?”
“Not long. Maybe ten minutes,” I supply, slipping a hand down his stomach, my self-restraint at an end.
The sound he makes when my hand wraps around his dick is like the purr of a large cat.
He lets me stroke him for a couple of minutes, and then he pulls me onto him.
I can’t help but wriggle atop of him even though things are still tender.
It doesn’t take long until I’m reaching down to slide him inside me, and the sex we have this morning is unhurried and sensual in a way that’s totally different from last night.
It leaves me wanting to find out all the ways Mark and I can enjoy each other’s bodies, and all the feelings it can evoke.
By the time we finally climb out of bed, I have been so thoroughly fucked that it’s like I’m riding on a drug-induced high. Mark gives me a pair of his sweatpants and a T-shirt because, as expected, my clothes are damp from sitting outside all night.
Then I’m seated at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and he wants to talk.
He hasn’t said the words out loud yet, but I can tell from the surreptitious glances he’s casting in my direction that he does, and he’s building up to it.
I consider making an excuse about why I have to leave before he can, but I don’t.
Like it or not, to get to Katie’s rapists, I need him.
And I need him to feel like it’s not too easy.
Like he had to work for it. For me. Because it’s what he likes.
Plus, he’d be suspicious of anything else.
Finally, as he takes a seat across from me, he says, “So, hey. About last night…”
“The part where the police showed up?” I ask, like I don’t know what he’s talking about when he trails off. “Because that was actually hotter than I thought it would be. Especially the part where you licked your cum off my legs.”
A hint of a smile tugs at his lips. “No, but I agree, and I’m willing to do that again anytime. Both parts.”
“Okay. So, what about last night? Since you’re suddenly acting like a boy who’s never kissed a girl before, and we both know that’s not true.”
“The part where you mentioned sleeping with other people,” he says.
“Oh.” I let the pause draw on, waiting to see what he’ll say, but he seems to have the same idea, so I give in. “Like I said, we barely know one another. I have no expectations of you. You’re free to sleep with other people. It’s not like—”
“I don’t want to sleep with other people,” Mark states, cutting me off.
“But you’re right that we’ve just met and don’t know each other that well.
However, I would like us to get to know each other and decide where we go from there.
I meant it when I said I wasn’t intending this to be a one-night stand. ”
“Okay,” I reply, acknowledging that I’m listening.
“And when I said I wasn’t anticipating that you’d be having sex with other people, I meant that too. I don’t share well.”
“No, I imagine not,” I murmur. “You want me to agree to enter into a monogamous relationship with you so that we can find out if we want to be in a monogamous relationship?”
“After last night—and this morning—do you really want to sleep with anyone else?”
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I want to say, ‘What’s the problem? Aside from the fact that I’m using you?
Aside from the fact that you’re going to end up wanting something I can’t give you?
’ but I don’t, because I do actually need this.
I simply feel terrible about it. Instead, I say, “You know how I told you last night that I’ve never been in love?
” He nods. “I wasn’t lying or exaggerating.
I think it’s not a thing that I can do, and I think it’s very much a thing that you can do.
You’re going to fall in love with me, and I won’t be able to reciprocate those feelings. ”
Mark bursts out laughing, and I’m sure he’s laughing at me, but I don’t know what the joke is. Eventually, he gets control of himself enough to say, “Two things. First, you have an extremely large amount of self-confidence.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just walk around the world assuming people are going to fall in love with you? Please, Alyssa.” He rolls his eyes. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“Fine. What’s the second thing?”
“Second, maybe you just haven’t met anyone worth falling in love with yet.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Pot meet kettle,” I finally say. “Now look who’s walking around the world assuming people are going to fall in love with him!”
“I merely want a chance, and you can’t tell me you don’t want the same. I saw the way you were looking at me when I woke up this morning.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You were looking at me like you can’t get enough of me. The same way you’re looking at me right now. I could bend you over the counter and have you begging me to fuck you within three minutes.”
“I’d like to see you try,” I scoff. Then he begins moving toward me, and I’m afraid he might be right. I hold up a hand. “Not right now, though.”
“Oh, so you acknowledge I’m right?”
“God. You really do love winning, don’t you?” I say, and he smirks. “Yes, you’re freaking right. I want you, okay? I look at you and I instantly think about you bending me over a counter! That doesn’t mean I should let you. Great sex isn’t the foundation of a long-term relationship.”
“No, but it can be the mortar that holds it together. All I’m asking is that you give us the chance to find out.”
“And what? Your only criterion is that I don’t sleep with other people? And you’ll do the same?”
“Yes. And we try it until one or both of us no longer wants to. That’s all any relationship ever is anyway. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.”
I take a deep breath, knowing I’m going to regret this. “Fine.” I extend my hand. “Deal.” He takes it and pulls me toward him, kissing me. He’s such a dick.
“I got your GIF,” I say to Katie when I walk in the door.
She’s in the kitchen, making a smoothie or something.
Somehow, I seem to be the only person in the world who thinks food should be eaten, not slurped through a straw.
Mark had the audacity to ask me if I wanted a protein shake this morning.
Evidently, the look on my face pretty quickly clued him in to the fact that I never want a protein shake. “And I hate you.”
“So, you wanna watch Miss Congeniality tonight?” she asks, looking away from the blender to me. “Oh. My. God. Are you wearing his clothes? Does this still count as a walk of shame if they’re not your clothes? I feel like the answer is yes.”
“Okay. First, I still hate you. You’re doing nothing to help your case.
Second, yes, we can watch Miss Congeniality tonight.
I do have to run an errand before that, though.
Third, I would have to feel shame for this to be a walk of shame.
And fourth, even if I did feel shame, I would feel it in style, Kay.
It wouldn’t be a walk of shame. It would be a parade of shame. Or maybe a sashay of shame.”
“I take it he’s really good in bed then?” Katie says with a grin.
“What makes you say that?”
“You and your freaking shame parade make me say that! You may as well have his name tattooed on your ass!” Katie states before immediately turning on the blender to drown out my response.
I leave her to her smoothie-making and go get in the shower.
Mark raised the idea of taking one together, but that seemed unwise given he had some hockey training-coaching-practice thing to be at this afternoon.
I’m honestly relieved that he hasn’t tried to mansplain hockey to me.
He doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t care about it at all.
But whatever he has to do, I know it’s not a game, because they have their first game of the season in a few days.
And although no one but me knows it, it’s going to be one for the history books.
Vaughn let me know Thursday afternoon that he’d be able to get me the cyanide I requested, and I need to go meet him to pick it up soon.
It turns out that the USDA Wildlife Services relies upon it heavily.
They use it in M44 devices to control the coyote population.
It’s a particularly nasty contraption that tricks coyotes into injecting themselves by biting on a lure that, when triggered, causes a canister to eject cyanide into their mouths, poisoning them.
The M44 devices have misfired a few times over the years, occasionally killing people too, but they still use them extensively.
And it also turns out that the USDA Wildlife Services doesn’t pay nearly as well as they should if they don’t want their employees to supplement their incomes by skipping setting up the odd device and selling the cyanide to people like Vaughn. And me.
“Each capsule contains a bit less than a gram of sodium cyanide,” Vaughn tells me as he hands over a pill bottle.
I already know this, but I let him continue talking anyway.
He’s worried I might screw up and poison myself.
I won’t. I’ve spent a lot of time buried in chemistry and toxicology textbooks lately.
Unlike the internet, the research you do via a book’s table of contents is untraceable.
Sodium cyanide has roughly the same density as table sugar.
For someone Joey Carmichael’s size—reportedly a hundred and eighty pounds—fifteen grams of sodium cyanide, absorbed via the dermal layer, should be more than sufficient to kill him.
I did my calculations based on a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man just to be safe.
“And there are seventeen capsules. You need to be careful not to let it come into contact with your skin, and even more careful that it’s not exposed to water while you’re around. ”
“I know, Vaughn,” I say. Sodium cyanide is cyanide in a salt form. Mix it with water, and it produces hydrogen cyanide, a very, very deadly gas. Much deadlier than sodium cyanide. “I’ll be fine. I’ll even promise to call and let you know when I’m done.”
“You do that. I take it things went well with Mark?”
“Yeah. To use your previous analogy, I believe it’s safe to say I’ve reeled him in.”
“And how do you feel about that?” Vaughn asks, looking at me, searching for something.
We’re sitting on the same park bench as we did last time we met.
I was tossing bread to the pigeons earlier, and even though I’ve long since run out, there’s still a small flock gathered around us, waiting to see if more will magically appear.
I shrug. “I don’t know. How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Make someone fall in love with you knowing you’re going to screw them over?” I don’t bother saying so, but it’s harder than I figured it would be. Or at least I’m feeling guiltier about it than I thought I would.
“Mostly you try not to think about it. Or at least that’s what I did, for all that it ever worked out for me,” he mutters.
“Meaning?”
“How do you think I met Marjorie?”
“Marjorie was a mark?” I question, not bothering to hide my surprise.
“Yeah, so when I tell you I know a thing or two about catching feelings, I know what I’m talking about, kid. Been there, done that, got the ring to prove it,” he states, flashing his left hand at me. “No judgment. I’m only saying I get it. If you ever need to talk.”
“I’m good. Thanks. How much do I owe you for this?” I ask, rattling the bottle at Vaughn. I’m sure this can’t have been cheap, and I won’t ask him to foot the bill for it.
“Don’t worry about it. The guy owed me a favor.”
“Do I need to worry that he’ll hear what’s happened and decide to pipe up about it?”
Vaughn snorts. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. Thanks again, Vaughn,” I say as I stand. I’ve got things to do. I have to go to the hardware store and pick up a respirator. Just to be safe. I shouldn’t need it, but going a little overboard on PPE never hurt anyone.
“Anytime. Remember to let me know you’re okay.”