Page 67 of Convict's Game

His mouth curved into a smirk. “Keep staring at me like that and I’m going to get arrested.”

“For what?”

“Indecent exposure.”

I laughed softly. “Can I ask about your thing with pain? How does that work?”

He shrugged. “Wish I could tell you. All I know is how the nurses in the hospital talked to me about pain management, and I realised I felt nothing like what they suggested I should.”

“You can feel touch, right?”

I reached out and ran a finger along his arm, from his wrist to the line of his black skeleton crew branded t-shirt. Then I trailed it back down but with a lighter touch.

He shivered and adjusted his position in the seat. “I feel that just fine.”

“You’re hard, aren’t you?” I paused. “That’s rhetorical. I can see it twitching.”

“Check you out, all brave and talking about my dick when you think I’m too occupied to use it.”

A thrill ran through me. God only knew how I could still be hot for him after all we’d done together. Yet my mind was right there in the gutter.

Convict slid a look my way. “To finish what I know, touch is fine, hard hits do nothing, and temperature is wacky. If you say it’s warm or cold, I generally haven’t noticed. Unless it’s right before I go to sleep. Then I feel something. Fucked up, aren’t I?”

I shook my head, making a mental note to ensure the blankets were over him when we went to bed.

Another thought occurred to me. “By the way, on health matters, I have a contraceptive implant, and I’ve never…been with anyone like we’ve done.”

Something passed over his face. “I had every test known to man in the hospital, so you’re safe with me. Well, safe-ish, because I’m having some pretty dark thoughts about your exes. Also, I’ll be plotting ways to remove that implant, and searching up ‘sneaky pregnancy hacks’ like a man with a mission.”

My jaw dropped. “You did not just say that.”

“Which part? Removing the fingers and eyes of anyone who ever touched you or the part about knocking you up? Happy to repeat it or go into detail.”

I hid my face and didn’t answer, reasonably sure he was joking.

We journeyed through the city and crossed the river to the Scottish side of Deadwater, entering an area of the city my grandmother would’ve turned her nose up at. Convict used his phone’s navigation to locate the Hazard Place address the hospital had given him, and we followed the directions deep into the suburbs and to a run-down street beside a flyover. He parked up adjacent to a terraced house.

The fact he’d needed directions to find somewhere he used to live hit me square in the feels.

I eyed the pebbledash building, noting how there were multiple bells for the different flats. “Anything familiar?”

“Nope.”

He climbed out then rounded to open my door, claiming my hand in his to cross the road. At the house, he took a deep breath then pressed the bell for 14B.

We waited.

Nothing happened.

I tried this time, pressing it twice. The filthy net curtain in the bay window a few feet to the left of us twitched. I waved to indicate we were friendly, then the window cracked open.

“What do you want?” a man asked against a backdrop of loud chatter from a television. He was probably in his sixties or so andclutched a cigarette in his hand, the glowing end dangerously close to burning a hole in the curtains. But all of that faded behind the stench of unwashed body that eked from the opening.

Convict squinted at him but didn’t speak.

“Is your flat 14B?” I asked.

“Might be. What of it?”