Page 38 of Kept in the Dark

“So…” her eyes narrow, but they dance in amusement. “You saw me sitting there, and you thought I’d save you from the big, bad security guard?”

That one nearly gets me. I almost smile at her joke. “You did,” I reply simply. “It was very convenient. We appeared to be lovers meeting. I believe this ruse is why he left me alone.”

Her demeanor shifts, eyes dropping to her lap and her spine straightening. “The ruse. Right. Okay, your turn.”

I am left scowling, with a curious sense of loss. Did I ruin that moment? What did I say?

We trade a few more moves without casualties, and I put her queen into retreat to regain power on the board. She tries to take back some of her positioning in the middle, and I narrow my eyes at the placement of the pieces—she has made a move that makes no sense—sacrificing a knight to take a pawn?

Her smile is half self-satisfaction and half childish glee. “Earlier you said that you have some people helping you?”

I know this is not her question, but a request for clarification, so I will give her this one. “Da.My team.”

“A team. What is it you do with your team?”

She has decided, then, that she wants to know. It is not exactly disappointment that fills me, but it is close—I had hoped to keep her from this. My voice lowers. “No longer asking the simple questions, I see.”

“I had to up the stakes eventually,” she returns, the mirth slowly dissolving in her expression at the serious tone of my voice.

“We do bad things to bad people.”

Her eyes drop back to the board, but this time I can see that she is retreating from the truth instead of plotting her next move. “I think I knew that,” she confesses softly after she processes the information. “What you said could mean a lot of different things, but… I think I know.”

I nod. “I also think you know.”

She inhales sharply, letting it blow out slowly. I observe her face, looking for signs of panic or fear. Because she will not meet my eye, it is difficult to tell how she is taking this information, so I lean forward and sacrifice part of my plan in order to take her knight now. “What would you say if I told you I was at the wedding to kill someone?”

“Kyle?” she asks softly.

“Someone worse. Someone with infinitely more innocent blood on his hands.” Even more than my own, perhaps.

Her eyes finally lift to meet mine, but it is not fear that I see. It is fire. Fury and guilt. “I would say… okay.” She huffs a laugh. “Maybe even good riddance.”

The cold intensity, the quiet fortitude, the reserved rage… it is so unexpected. And it sets off a chain of conflicting physical reactions. My body goes stiff and still, then a blast of heat pulses through me. I want to reach for her, to grab her and hold on, and I want her to fight me. I want to absorb that powerful reaction into myself and give it back even stronger.

I barely dare to breathe. “Do you think some people deserve to die, Nicole?”

“I mean…” She looks away. The intensity of the moment is perhaps a bit too overwhelming. “Yeah… but… in a decidedly more Kevorkian way than I think you mean it. Or at least I thought I did.”

“Explain.”

“Kevorkian was a doctor who believed in a patient’s right to choose their own end of life.” She blows out a long breath, fixing her stare into the middle distance. “Do I think the late-stage cancer patient, whose every breath is a fight through pain and whose body has become a cage, deserves to die? Yeah, especially if he has faith in some kind of heaven or afterlife. He deserves the release, the freedom from the pain, if that’s what he wants.”

I say nothing to this because I have nothing to add. This is… not what I was expecting. I know I did not misspeak, but she has twisted my meaning in a way that is fascinating instead of irritating.

“Do I think that the man who shows no remorse after raping and murdering his wife deserves to die? Not really. It’s almost… too easy, you know?”

“Easy?” I ask. I wish she would look at me. I want to watch her expressive eyes as she confesses these thoughts she believes are so dark.

“A quick death is… I don’t know—an easy out, somehow. He deserves to… suffer, I guess. You can’t suffer if you’re dead.”

This is not where I thought this conversation would lead. I merely wanted to understand what she would do if her problems disappeared suddenly, along with the man causing them.

Now I am very pleased that I asked.

My dick thickens, filling with need as my heart pounds out a dark call for her. Such a macabre conversation and such a grotesque response, but this unexpected bloodthirstiness in someone who seems so gentle and giving… it is like an aphrodisiac to me. Perhaps she will not shy away from what I do after all. She is like the winter-toughened women of my home country, in a soft, beautiful package.

“You cannot suffer if you are dead,” I echo.