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“You know, um.” My forced smile must look as fake as it feels. “Those things we used to drown a corpse?”

His eyes are hidden, yet his gaze is just as powerful. Just as probing as if I were staring into those golden pools without a barrier between us.

“Could you at least tell me who’s paying for this?” I hug my middle, forcing down the nagging concerns. He promised he wouldn’t get caught and I have to trust him.

He doesn’t have to do this alone, though. Surely, he knows that.

So I try harder for him. I smile, hoping he’ll see my love shining through it.

Kaleb’s head remains at that creepy angle when he presses two fingers under my chin and tips my head up.

Don’t you trust me?

That’s what this gesture is about. That, and he’s tired of talking. He’s doing his best to be communicative for me, but he’s not in the mood. I can tell. He needs me to understand.

“When you’re able to talk, please come to me.” I wrap a hand around his wrist, stroking the inside of it. His pulse. I’m addicted to the feel of it. “Let’s go home.”

He grows a little softer, caressing my jaw with his thumb. Kaleb tells me in his own way that I’m his good girl. That he’ll always come to me.

We drive in silence through quiet streets, through light traffic.

“I’ll be there. For you.” I place my palm facing up over the console and he laces his fingers into mine. We wore gloves to handle the body. We don’t anymore. It’s us, skin to skin.

“I won’t let go, Kaleb.” No matter what he tells me. No matter what he has planned for us, like killing our parents.

My bones nearly crack from how hard he squeezes my hand. I hold steady. I take it.

He returns to the parking spot we left less than an hour ago, a few feet from his apartment.

Well, not his.

Whose is it?

The recurring question dies out when he wrenches the passenger door open.

The crisp fall air hits me first, then it’s him, throwing me over his shoulder. His arm around my legs—careful, without hurting my wounded skin—is so comforting I could die like this. Just like that.

I try to mirror the sentiment by rubbing his giant back. His muscles ripple under my touch as we walk to the apartment. His body speaks to me, though his mouth won’t.

As he sets me down in the shower and whips my clothes off, I get lost in his touch. In him.

He said it and I felt it before—we belong together. We do. It’s as simple as that.

For the second time tonight, Kaleb lathers shampoo into my hair and massages soap into my skin. Leaving no trace that we ever drove a body to the pier and dumped it into the ocean.

He cares for me, even though he’s so deep inside himself that his eyes are as bleak and emotionless as ever.

I don’t ask, letting him wash me thoroughly as if he hadn’t done it right before we left. Meticulously. Methodically.

He does it to show me he’s changed. That he takes care of what’s his while erasing the evidence of a crime.

My body wakes from his rough attention, impersonal as it is.

My nipples peak as he cleans them.

It’s then that he rolls them between his fingers. It’s then that I lean into him. My skin breaks out in goosebumps. My pussy is soaked, thighs squeezing his hand as he soaps me there.

His gaze darkens, and he takes me here, up against the wall.