Page 46 of Half the Summer's Night

“You think I don’t know that about you?”

Abi’s eyes widen. Her fear spikes. God, it smells fucking good.

“And you still think it’s random?” she manages to sputter out. “And not a message?”

A weighted silence passes between us.

“Like one of my messages?” I finally ask. “No, little detective. It’s not the same.”

Before she can protest, I rub my thumb over her cheek. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t tell me to stop.Not even when I trace my thumb over her bottom lip.

But god, do I feel her tremble.

I think that’s why I ask what I do next. Because I have a name, even if I don’t have much else. I can look into it later. But not right now. Right now, I want to feel Abi tremble again.

“Now,” I murmur. “Can I ask you a question?”

Abi stares at me, drinking in my killing face. The scent of orchids is overwhelming.

“May I touch you?”

18

ABI

The question throbs on the thick, sultry air. The last time he asked it, in my office, I shoved him away.

I don’t shove him away tonight.

“You’re already touching me,” I finally say.

“You know what I mean.” My killer presses himself up to me, his other hand coming to rest on my hip. “I want to make you feel good, so you’ll forget about all this, just for a little bit.”

Why?I scream internally. It makes no sense. I know what he’s capable of. I’ve seen it firsthand. And yet?—

And yet his hand on my hip is impossibly warm. Impossibly heavy.

“Out here?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer right away. Then he pulls his hand away from my hip and slides up his mask. Not enough for me to see his face, but enough that I can see his full, sensual lips.

“May I?” he asks, tilting in toward me.

A too-small part of me is screaming to stop, to run, to call the police. Too small, and it’s getting smaller by the second.

I nod, my throat too dry to speak.

He gives me another one of those soft, chaste kisses. Electricity ripples through my body, and I tilt my head and return it with the barest hint of pressure.

My killer deepens the kiss, parting my lips with his tongue. I let him. Not only that, but I open up to him. His tongue slips over mine, and he presses closer against me, his hand tangling up in my hair.

For a long time, that’s all we do. This slow, meditative kiss. It’s not a lot, but the tenderness of it sends heat pooling between my legs.

My killer’s the first to break it. He pulls away, his gloved fingers still twining around my hair, and I stare at his mouth, at the scatter of five o’clock shadow across his chin. The same dark brown with red highlights that I noticed earlier.

And then he jerks his mask down, recovering his mouth.

“Inside,” he says, the voice coming from the mask’s twisted, leering lips.