Page 25 of The Maddest Obsession (Made 2)

I held her gaze.

Tap . . . tap.

She waited on bated breath for the next tap that would never come. “Are you obsessing over the third now?”

“No.”

Yes.

“Do you consider yourself OCD?”

“Mildly, self-diagnosed,” I answered, looking at the clock. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and impatience burrowed beneath my skin. I had shit to do this evening. I was on suspension at the Bureau, but I’d taken

on more work by outside sources, as much as was possible, because if I didn’t stay busy I was afraid I’d burn under the heat of my own fucking anger.

I’d climbed my way out of hell, had seen it, tasted it, felt it, and the only thing that got me through had been dreaming about revenge and everything I would have on the other side. I’d planned my future out, from the kind of woman I’d marry to the type of hardwood in my apartment. Nowhere in those dreams had I ever planned for a Gianna Marino.

I should feel reprieved she was married and out of my reach again, but, fuck . . . it sometimes felt like an impossible feat to forget her.

“What about contamination symptoms?” she added, averting her gaze like there was something important in my file she’d just now noticed.

“More gossip, Sasha?”

Not surprising. When someone met me, they didn’t forget me. Except for one woman, anyway. My face had been a curse when I was a kid, but now, I took advantage of it. To intimidate, to manipulate, to get whatever I wanted. Power. Information. Women. Ironic, that the one thing I now wanted, I couldn’t fucking have.

She looked up, flustered with herself. “You don’t kiss on the mouth.”

“True.”

“Why not?”

“It’s messy and unnecessary.”

Her eyes flickered with confliction. She’d already dug deeper into my psyche than this evaluation should have. Her interest was plain curiosity, the reason anyone decided they wanted to become a psychologist—to crack open a human’s mind like an egg, to see what made us tick. What she didn’t know was that I didn’t tick. I’d made the fucking clock.

“You don’t seem to have the same opinion regarding . . . other parts of a woman’s anatomy.”

I laughed.

I wouldn’t have a problem with any part of a certain woman’s anatomy. Truthfully, I’d let her spit in my goddamn mouth.

“So, if you’re willing to . . .”

“Eat pussy?”

She flushed. “This has gone beyond what it should have,” she muttered, fumbling with her pen.

“Are you getting all this down, Sasha?” I adjusted my cuff.

“Why no kissing?” Her uneasy movements had paused, her curiosity unwilling to let it go.

She thought she’d found something, a piece of the puzzle that made me. In truth, she was probably close. If she pulled at this thread hard enough, she might free another.

“Lipstick,” I said. “I hate it.”

Specifically, red.

A heart-shaped stain on my cheek. The red imprint left on the edge of a dirty glass or a lit cigarette lying on cracked pavement. The twisting of a little black container. I fucking hated all of it.