“No,” I whimper, “please don’t.”
“That’s my girl,” he says, patting the top of my hair in a gesture from anyone else would have been soothing. He lets go of the chain and it falls to the bottom of the bowl with a small splash. I lurch forward, watching as he flushes my beautiful gift away, out of sight.
I look up at him, tears falling down my face, imploring him to tell me why he’d done that. I hadn’t done anything to deserve that.
“Why?” I eventually croak. He pats my head once more, an almost sad smile marring his features. He leans down, still stroking my hair and his whisky breath fills my nose as he whispers, “Because I could.”
He turns and walks out of the room, leaving me alone listening to the cistern filling back up as I stare into the toilet.
A shadow in the doorway has me looking up to see Ronan standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his green eyes watching me with a wicked grin on his face.
I hate him. I hate them both.
I lay in bed, the morning sun slowly rising as I looked up at the ceiling, and ran a hand along my collarbone, thinking about that Christmas. I’d been so happy for all of five days before my dad decided to shit all over it. Alex had insisted on buying me a new necklace to replace the one he stole, but I had refused. If my dad found that one too, he’d have broken me worse than he did that day.
Broken bones would heal, and scars would fade, but that day he broke my heart and that shit couldn’t be mended.
I sighed and looked at my alarm clock flashing five twenty-three. Will had given me another assignment last night which Alex had left the dossier on my bed like the chickenshit he was, and when Will’s fourth phone call went to voicemail, I received a less than friendly text reminding me who “owned” me and since the Jake Weston job was an ongoing one with no set end date, I better accept.
The rain was hammering down this morning, thundering on the porch furniture wrapped in a tarp cover outside. I had moved to the kitchen and opened the window wide, listening to the continuous patter of water smacking on the ground as I finished packing biscuit crumbs into the bottom of a tin.
Despite my nightmare, I had woken up refreshed for the first time in months, which may more or less have something to do with the mind-blowing orgasm Jake gave me last night.
If that was what it was like with his fingers, imagine what it would be like with his…
No. Last night could not be a repeat performance, regardless of how much I wanted it. I was a professional, and that line needed to be re-established pronto; the professional standard I kept myself to had already become too murky to see.
Some people in my profession might use sex as a way to get information or get closer to the target, but not me. I hadn’t needed to spread my legs to get the job done before, and I wouldn’t be starting now.
Alex came into the kitchen wearing nothing but his boxers and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before starting on making coffee. I gave him a glance over my shoulder, furrowing my eyebrows as he grabbed three mugs from the cupboard and sat them on the counter. He turned to face me, folding his arms across his broad chest, and gave me a look that was filled with mirth.
“Are we going to talk about your dirty antics last night?” he asked, reaching up to run his hand through his dark hair as his equally dark eyes twinkled in delight.
“I don’t think there is anything to discuss,” I replied flatly, covering the baking tin with plastic wrap and putting it in the fridge to set. So much for my good fucking mood.
Alex chuckled as I started rummaging around the fridge, pulling out ingredients and placing them on the countertop. Grabbing a knife and chopping board, I carefully sliced through a vanilla pod, running the edge of the blade down the length and caught the small black seeds in a bowl filled with soft cheese and icing sugar.
“I think it’s good that you’re finally getting some. Will won’t be happy, but I am,” he continued, ignoring the tension starting to build from stating this topic of conversation was not going to go down well. “We all know you needed a good fucking, but are you sure you should be doing it with him? I mean, it’s not like you’ve worked with men before that wouldn’t love to invite you into their bed, but you’ve kept a tight lid on that. I guess there was bound to be one target who’d...”
I had silently moved to stand behind him as he spoke and wrapped my arm under his just as he reached to turn on the coffee machine. I held the tip of my knife to his throat.
“Be very careful with the next words that come out your mouth, Alex,” I growled, drawing the knife away from his neck and down the frontal planes of his body where I ended at a drawer in front of him and opened it with a smack to his stomach and pulled out a wooden spoon.
“I’m only looking out for you, Stevie baby.” He huffed, giving his stomach a rub.
“You sound like Mac,” I muttered to myself, but with the way his grip held the counter, Alex had heard me. I smacked him on the ass with the spoon as I moved away to continue making the cheesecake, trying to ease some of this morning’s tension. I knew he had my best interests at heart, but sometimes he was a bit too overprotective, and if we were going to find out more about Jake, we needed to get close to him. That just meant I had to ensure my big girl pants remained up my legs and not down them.
“It was a mistake that won’t be happening again.” That statement lacked the conviction out loud as it did in my head. For some reason, unknown to myself, I liked Jake and felt drawn to him.
An unfamiliar sound of soft padding of bare feet came along the hall and into the kitchen as I started to mix the bowl full of ingredients. A thin brunette, slightly shorter than me, nervously shuffled towards Alex, wearing a white V-neck, no doubt one of his, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She gave me an apprehensive smile as Alex handed her a mug and turned back to finish making the others.
Now I know why he took out three mugs.
The woman gave me a quick scan, taking in my shorter than necessary pink shorts and matching bright pink crop top that said ′I’m all in’ with two stick figures doing it doggie style below it. She shivered, clearly uncomfortable, which made my predatory grin come out to play.
Alex never brought women back to the house, something about him not wanting crazy psycho stalkers knowing where he lived and subsequently sneaking in to watch him whilst he slept.
“Alex, do we maybe need to discuss your dirty antics last night?” I repeated his earlier words, turning my attention back to the bowl, and gently began to fold in the whipped cream I made earlier. I could be on a children’s TV show, albeit a very creepy children’s TV show.
I dipped my finger in the now blended mixture and brought it to my mouth, sucking it clean and pulling it out with a loud, obnoxious pop. Yum.
Alex passed me a coffee mug and ran his hand up and down his washboard abs while the girl watched him in hunger, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. He reached out and tugged her into his side.
“This is Hannah,” he said conversationally, as if there weren’t three scantily clad adults standing in my kitchen so early in the morning. I hummed in reply, opening the fridge to add the bowl, and instantly forgot her name. I was being rude and dismissive, but this girl was just another name on his ‘Pounce and Bounce’ list, so there was zero point in me trying to remember it. I bet he wouldn’t even bother giving her a fake number when he kicked her ass out.
“I am so sorry. I had no idea you’d be up so early,” Hannah said in a sickly sweet voice as she snuggled further into Alex’s chest. “It’s nice to meet you. Matt has told me so much about you.”
I gave her my best fake smile and glared at Alex when the girl looked up to bat her eyelashes at him. This was unlike Alex. Yes, he was a notorious womaniser, but he never had girls back-to-back in quick succession like this.
“Go back to my room, baby,” he said, pushing her off in that direction, and smacking her on the ass to make her squeal with a giggle as she ran away. “Make sure you’re completely naked for when I join you.”
We stood watching Hannah leave in silence and waited to hear the click of the bedroom door closing. I punched Alex on the arm, scowling at him as he stared at the empty space, an odd look on his face.
“What happened to ‘no women back to mine,’ huh?”
“I had to. She wasn’t up for fucking in the toilets,” he replied with a quick shake of his head and flashed a dirty smirk as he rubbed the spot where I’d hit him. “She’s only passing through town. Low risk of her becoming a bunny boiler.” I rolled my eyes and punched him on his arm again.
“What?” Alex chuckled, itching the stubble that lined his jaw. “I went to Alice’s Place after you went to bed last night and Lexi kept making gooey eyes at me all night, but she’d been banging on about this tall, dark, and handsome guy that had been with you. I didn’t really want to fuck her while she pictured Jake - hence Hannah.” He wrinkled his nose in irritation at the thought of the girl he was banging, imagining she was getting it good by another man. He took a long sip from his coffee mug and gagged dramatically. I laughed out loud at his annoyance at not being the whole focus of a girl’s attention and grabbed a pair of disposable latex gloves from under the sink.
“She was trying pretty hard to catch his attention,” I admitted, pulling the gloves down to my wrist with a snap. The usual small ball of jealousy that I was becoming far too acquainted with formed in the pit of my stomach as I thought of Lexi running her hand up Jake’s arm seductively, not even caring I was there. We weren’t friends or anything, but there was a girl code, and even though I didn’t have many girlfriends — none at all, actually — I still knew that went against the code.
“Is everything alright?” I asked my best friend with a tilt to my head, watching as he appeared to have zoned out again. Alex glanced up from his mug and offered a small smile, although it didn’t meet his eyes. They were sad.
“I’m okay, Stevie baby,” he finally answered as he looked at the ink on the back of his hand. I wished he would tell me what or who that was for, but whenever I brought it up, he shut down. I so badly wanted to let him lean on me the way he had always allowed me to do.
Alex picked up a small, sealed container from the windowsill between the edges of his thumb and finger as if the box contained shit, melancholy forgotten. I held my hand out and took it off him and smirked.
Belladonna, or the devil’s cherries, were one of the most toxic plants native to England and goddamned hard to get a hold of when you required top quality product. As little as two of these blood-red suckers could kill a child.
“Fuck, careful with those things,” Alex said, watching me intently as I peered into the container at the shiny dark cherry-like fruit that almost looked black in colour. He walked over to his leather jacket lying across the back the barstool and tossed me a burner phone, along with a small orange bottle from the pocket. My smile widened as I read the prescription label; Kaya Lemont, 50 milligrams Amitriptyline, one tablet; morning and night.
“Have I told you I love you recently?” I asked, rattling the tablets in Alex’s direction.
“Do you know how hard it was to steal that prescription pad? I had to visit that shrink’s office for 3 sessions and talk about a fake family and shit just to get close to her,” he said, grabbing his mug and standing behind me.
“Why didn’t you just sleep with her to steal it? Isn’t that usually your go-to?”
“Didn’t really feel like it,” he replied, and I could feel him shrug as he watched over my shoulder. I put the tub down on the counter and turned to face him with my hands on my hips.
“Okay, what’s up?”
“Nothing, Stevie baby, I promise I’m fine.” He sighed. “Just shit going on in my head, nothing major.” I stared into his eyes, hoping to find something behind them, but he pressed a kiss to my forehead and left to return to the presumably naked girl in his room.
I was alone, worried about Alex, and once again listening to the sound of the rain as faint scratches from Rocky locked in my bedroom appeared intermittently. I couldn’t risk him jumping up and swiping one of these berries.
I took them out of their container, washed and cut them into quarters. Some I mixed into a small portion of the cheese and cream mixture, ensuring I had mixed in enough to cause the intended damage. The others would be left to decorate the top once it had been set.
I softly hummed Carly Simon’s Coming Around Again, the extended version where she sang Itsy Bitsy Spider at the end, as I cut into the deadly berries. That song from the eighties was about the only thing I remembered about my mother before she left us and always filled my head as I prepared to end someone’s life. Why? I had no idea, but I guess it was just another fucked up thing left in my subconscious by my fucked up family.