4
Kane
Girl Talk
Un-setting my alarm system, I step onto stained carpet and narrow my eyes at the rattling walls across the hall. My neighbor’s throwing his missus against the wall – in rage, or in ecstasy, I’ll never know.
Closing my door, I look to both ends of the dark hall to make sure it’s empty. With a mentalready, set, go, I push off and sprint the five flights to my truck to collect Jess’ handbag and files.
I’m not an idiot, I know what’s in the files. Just like I know how she knows my name. She’s not the only person that knows my name.
She’sdefinitelynot the only person studying me.
They want Abel Hayes. They want to turn the key on his cell and lock him away for life, but to get to him, they have to get through me.
I’ll fall long before he does, not because of my loyalty to him, but because I’m a pawn in the Inferno game. He’ll throw me to the wolves long before a single cop gets within a hundred miles of him.
Juliette Turner and her chief husband are teeny tiny fish in Hayes’ pond.
I tuck the files under my arm and eye my dark apartment window from the parking lot. What the fuck have I done? How did I get to this point that I have the blonde lawyer unconscious in my bed?
I should’ve dropped her off at the hospital.
Or the fire station.
Anywherebut my bed.
Already gone for too long, I sprint back into my building and up the stairs. If I leave my post for more than a minute, my neighbors will help themselves to the unconscious woman on my bed.
I stop at my apartment door and ready myself the way I have to everywhere I go. Laser focused, with one hand at my back, I push the door open and glance into the bathroom to make sure no one snuck in while I was gone.
When I find it empty, I close the front door, reset my kitchenware alarm, and kick mycheap shopboots off.
I drop Jess’ fancy leather handbag on my couch and stop at the contrast between the red leather and my shitty blue and yellow sofa. They’re as different as Jess and I. They contrast in much the same way aguy like mewould stand out at a Lenaghan Thanksgiving dinner.
They’re all so pure, so squeaky clean, so Barbie-ish, and then there’s me, more ink than skin, more attitude than I can afford.
Poking around inside her bag and risking another scolding from MissEqual Opportunity,I search for her cell, but stop when a bolt of electricity shoots through my chest.
Last night, I stood by with barely a reaction while this beautiful girl was being attacked – if you don’t consider the slitting his throat thing areaction. But now, when a shiny, black metal object rolls toward my hands, I stop and shoot my eyes toward the innocent woman taking up half my bed.
Picking up the…objectbetween finger and thumb, I eye the contraption and try to place a different use to it. I know what it is. But it’s not something women usually carry around in their purses.
Definitely not something the likes of Jessica Ann Lenaghan would carry around.
Moving back with an explosive exhale, I glance at her lean body, her legs, her ass, and those fucking panties she insists on flashing.
I’m just a man, alone in a dark apartment, with a beautiful, half naked woman on my bed, and an ass plug in my hands.
What’s a man to do?
Tossing the plug back in her bag before my cock breaks through my jeans and I turn into Lance, I swipe up her cell and push the bag and files aside.
Sitting on the couch – less than a foot and a half from the enticing sex toy – I press the home button on her cell and grin at an image of herself and the man I know to be her brother.
They look so similar, the Lenaghan folks must both be blonde and blue eyed.
Perhaps siblings.