I don’t. But at the sight of that apartment, stripped clean and looking like no one actually lived there, I suddenly started to wonder. What do you do if you’re a serial killer and you move to a new city because you can’t stay in the one where you’ve just murdered someone?
I bet you don’t go out of your way to decorate if you’re in an apartment that you’re not going to stay in for long.
And I bet picking women up in the city’s rose garden and then getting them drunk is exactly the sort of thing you do.
I turned back toward the door, my heart racing at the thought—and further, at the thought that I was a freaking mother and should have known better, should have been more careful—and found Jack standing right behind me. Between me and the door.
“What on earth is going through that mind of yours?” he asked, half-smiling.
I jerked to a stop. “Nothing. Why? What do you think is going through my mind?”
Okay, yeah, I sounded nervous as hell. More than a little bit freaked out. Because I was. Nervous and freaked out, I mean.
He took a step closer to me, crowding me a little bit, and I stiffened.
“I don’t know, but I’ve watched your face go from sexy to shocked to downright fearful in the space of about three seconds. Is it…” He stopped, his eyes flitting around the room as if he was seeing it for the first time. And then his face fell. “It’s my apartment, isn’t it? It’s not what you expected.”
And he seemed so crushed by this, so incredibly disappointed in himself, that I suddenly felt deeply, horribly guilty for having jumped to such conclusions. I mean they didn’t disappear, those suspicions. But I felt worse about them.
Because I really hadn’t had any reason to think those things, if you come right down to it. So the guy didn’t like to decorate. Maybe he didn’t have the money to get anything nice. Maybe his new company was really new—like that kind of new where he was still living on ramen and soda, and didn’t even have enough money for a bed yet.
I’d been there. I should have realized that he might be there right now. Rather than being a serial killer.
“It’s not what I expected, no,” I admitted, smiling a little bit. “It’s just so…”
“Undecorated?” he supplied.
I nodded, twisting my mouth to the side. “I mean, yeah. It sort of looks like how I’d expect a serial killer’s apartment to look. I mean… like they couldn’t be bothered with the whole decorating thing.”
He barked with laughter so suddenly that I jumped, and then fell into such a belly laugh that I smiled in spite of myself.
“What?” I asked. “It’s the truth! Do you think serial killers bother with nice décor?”
He came a step closer, and I backed up a step further, still not certain about whether I wanted to be all that close to him. Then I came to an abrupt stop against the wall—which I hadn’t realized I was standing so close to—and gasped.
“Do you spend much time thinking about what serial killers do in their apartments?” he teased, reaching up with one finger to brush a curl off my forehead.
My body tried to melt into a pool on the floor at the feel of his finger on my bare skin, but I locked my knees in place and demanded that they stay there. This was no time to go melting into a puddle of goo. This was a time to be strong. Keep my brain moving. Keep my logic working.
If only I hadn’t had so much to drink. Why the hell had I had so much to drink? What had I been thinking, to let my guard down like that?
“I don’t, actually,” I whispered, and my voice—much to my embarrassment—came out in a sort of hoarse impersonation of a voice, rather than my usual strong tone. Like I was using too much breath and not enough voice box.
Get. It. Together! I commanded myself. What the hell was going on with me?
But I knew what was going on with me. This man was going on with me. With his smoldering eyes and five-o’clock shadow and chiseled jaw and quick wit, and those big, stupid muscles, and that slight bad boy vibe, and…
He put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face, so I was looking up into his eyes, and tipped his head.
“So, you only bring out the serial killer conspiracy theories for me?” he whispered.
He pressed up against me, then, pinning me between his body and the wall, and the knees that I’d commanded to lock gave out entirely. I could feel every inch of him—and that included at least seven hard inches currently encompassed by his jeans, but making a very strong argument for being released.
“I guess so,” I whispered back, my mind no longer on serial killers at all.
When he dipped his head to claim my mouth, I didn’t even argue. I did, however, allow my brain to turn all the way off as he kissed me, his hands rising up to cup my cheeks gently as he angled my head to get better access to my mouth, his tongue moving in an out in time to the rocking of his hips up against me.
And before I knew it, I was running my hands up his chest and into his hair, my own hips rocking in time with his as my legs opened beneath him in invitation, my body seeming to move on its own—which was good, since my brain was turned off.
Not that my brain would have known what to do, anyhow. It had been years since I’d made out with anyone, and I didn’t think I’d ever made out with anyone this freaking hot before. I’d definitely never made out with anyone who made my body sing like this man did.
Regardless of whether he was a serial killer or not.
I was just starting to really get into the idea of making out, my voice coming out in tiny grunts against his mouth, my blood rushing too close to my skin for comfort, my center absolutely screaming with need, when it all went sideways.
He paused a bit in a move, as if he’d suddenly become distracted, and then grabbed my hands, pulled them down in between us, and…
Slapped a pair of handcuffs on me.
For a moment, I wondered if this was part of the game. If he was one of those guys who got off on the power of handcuffing the woman he was with. Which was… well, not anything I’d ever done before, but based on the way my body was buzzing, I was guessing it could actually be pretty hot. But then I realized that these were metal handcuffs. And weren’t you supposed to use fuzzy ones if you were going for that whole S&M thing?
And then he pulled back, all the haziness gone from his gaze, all the lust disappearing from his face, and gazed down at me with something that looked like apology in his eyes.
And in that moment, I realized that this wasn’t sexy. This wasn’t a fun game. This wasn’t even a walking-a-fine-line sort of hookup that I would second-guess come morning.
No, this was something that I had never seen coming. Or rather, I had sort of seen it coming… and then talked myself out of believing it.
And unless I was incredibly off base, it was very, very bad.
Chapter 7
Alice
I jerked once against the handcuffs, my brain scrambling to try to keep up with what was happening, and then turned my eyes back up to the man in front of me. The man who had seemed so sexy and rugged only moments ago…
And who I now saw as something completely different.
Those eyes weren’t deep and mysterious; they were shifty and incapable of settling on anything—especially right now, when they were colored with guilt. That five-o’clock shadow wasn’t a sexy stubble, built and maintained to stand out against the smooth-shaven faces of Silicon Valley boy-men. It was the result of not caring enough to fit in with civilized society.