45. Milo #2
“You. This.” I gesture at the room, at her, at the man formerly known as Dale Stine. “I mean, the volume of blood is genuinely impressive. I think you got arterial. Did you get arterial? Because that wall says you got arterial.”
“Milo, I—”
“Kitten.” I take her face in my hands, blood and all. Her skin is slick and warm under my palms. “You’re so beautiful I don’t even know where to start.” I sweep the hair out of her face with fingers that leave streaks on her cheek.
She’s shaking, every part of her quivering with adrenaline. I can see the animal joy in her, the way it wants to slip the leash, the sense that if I said something wrong it would shatter her and if I said something right it would shatter her and either way, it would be perfect.
She blinks hard, some of the focus leaking out. “I’m a fucking mess.”
“You’re a goddess.” I lean forward and kiss her, letting her taste the truth of it.
Blood and all. She gasps into it, and for a second she’s stiff, tense, like she still might run.
Then she fucking melts. The knife hits the floor with a clatter.
Her hands come up, slick with blood, clutching at my T-shirt, at my hair, yanking me so tight it’s like she’s trying to fuse us into a single, pulsing being.
I walk her backward until her legs hit the bed. She pulls me down on top of her and we fall onto the polyester bedspread, and I’m peeling her wet shirt off and she’s yanking at my belt and neither of us says a word about the dead man on the carpet three feet to our left.
This is fucked up. I’m aware. On a scale of one to needs-therapy, this is somewhere around call-the-Vatican.
I’ve been told by at least three mental health professionals that my major flaw is “inappropriate affect.” As in, I respond to life-and-death situations like I’m at a birthday party and respond to birthday parties like they’re a funeral.
Case in point: that time my girlfriend stabbed a serial rapist eleventy-billion times and we made out on the crime scene bed like prom night at the slaughterhouse.
She’s everywhere. Mouth, teeth, nails. Her hands claw at my neck, my jaw, down my chest. I don’t mind losing a little epidermis for her; it’ll grow back. Most things on my body grow for her.
She shoves my jeans down, just enough to get my dick out.
I drag her open jeans and underwear down to her thighs, and she hooks one leg over my hip, moaning as I sink into her.
It’s raw, body-wrecking, so good even my nervous system is overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the input.
She’s tight, slick, greedy—her teeth find my shoulder and break skin, and the pain-wired-through-pleasure short-circuits my head.
I fuck her hard, not gentle, not careful, and it’s exactly what she wants because she comes on my cock ridiculously fast, full-body shudders.
I follow seconds later, buried deep, my forehead pressed to hers, both of us shaking and blood-smeared and probably damned but definitely alive.
We lie there. Breathing. The room smells like blood and sex and sweat—my favorite.
I lean in, nuzzling her neck. “Ah, the sweet scent of red body spray.”
“It’s blood.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re insane,” she whispers.
“You literally snuck out of bed to come and stab a man you’ve never met, and I’m the insane one?”
“You’re the one who fucked me next to his body.”
“You fucked me back.”
She laughs. Then she presses her face into my chest and cries—hard, shaking sobs that rack her whole body.
I hold her through it, stroking her blood-matted hair, letting the comedown happen.
This is the part most people don’t understand about what we do.
The kill is adrenaline. The aftermath is gravity.
When the sobs slow down, I kiss her forehead. “You did good, kitten. He deserved every single one of those holes.”
“I fucked up, Milo. If you hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have been able to get up. And there’s so much blood.”
“There is. There really is. It’s . . . a lot.”
“I didn’t plan for this part.”
“I know. That’s why I followed you.”
“You knew what I was going to do?”
“Yeah. You weren’t exactly hiding it, kitten. When you plan a murder, you’re cagey as fuck.” I kiss her. It’s clumsy, hot with panic and devotion. “I’m so fucking proud of you. Like, kitten, you have no idea. I nearly started live-tweeting your murder to the group chat.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m kidding—they’d be mad. But I did consider posting a countdown clock on the kitchen whiteboard. Days Since Kitten Disobeyed Hangmen Protocol: Zero. With your head on the logo.” I tap her nose. “I even had a meme ready.”
She punches me in the shoulder, then sob-laughs and wipes her cheek. The blood makes a smeary streak across her face, which—somehow—makes her sexier.
“Stop. My adrenaline is about to flatline and I’m running entirely on existential terror.”
“Want a juice box?” I rummage in the go-bag, find a Capri Sun, stab the straw through the foil seal, and hand it over.
She drinks it as I take a moment to look around the room with operational eyes instead of horny-boyfriend eyes. The main issue, aside from the body, is the mess. It’s everywhere. The kind of carnage you’d expect from two chainsaws and a wood chipper, not one five-foot-four waitress with a knife.
I do quick mental math as I look at all the blood. I’m thinking luminol, cells, absorbency, how much time we have before management comes knocking—and I know this is bigger than just me.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “So here’s the thing.”
“What?”
“I love you. I’m so proud of you. You are the most terrifying thing within fifty miles of here and I would follow you anywhere. But—”
“But?”
“I thought I could handle this without calling in the others. I brought the kit. I’ve got bleach, sheeting, the works.
But kitten—” I gesture at the room. “This is above my pay grade. Way above. This isn’t a wipe-down-and-go situation.
This is a burn-the-building-down situation, and I don’t have the accelerant for that. ”
“What are you saying?”
I pull out my phone. “I’m saying we need to call Holden.”
She sits up, eyes wide. “No. Milo, no. He’ll—”
“He’ll what? Be mad? Kitten, they’re all going to be furious.
Knox is going to have an aneurysm. Eli is going to go so still we’ll all fear for our lives.
Holden will probably spank you—and not in the fun way Eli does it.
And Micah—” I wince. “Micah is going to give us both the look. You know the look.”
“The disappointed-parent look.”
“That’s the one.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “But they’ll also help us. Because that’s what we do. And because they love you. And because this guy—” I nod at the floor. “—had it coming.”
She looks at the body. Then at me. Then at her hands, still red and trembling.
“They’re going to kill me,” she says.
“They’re not. They might kill me, because I knew and let you do it. But you? You just proved you’re one of us.” I hold up the phone. “Can I call?”
She takes a breath. Nods.
I dial Holden. He picks up on the second ring, because Holden always picks up on the second ring. It’s pathological.
“Where the fuck are you? It’s two a.m. And we’re—”
“About that—funny story.”