Page 66 of Rule the Night

“Do you have any of your other pieces here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They’re all at a gallery in the city.”

“A gallery?” I didn’t even try to hide my surprise. What was an artist — a real artist — doing on the Southside of Blackwell Falls, two hours from the city, wearing a mask and chasing women through underground tunnels every three months?

“Yeah.”

I circled the piece of metal, looking at it from every angle. “How did you get into this?”

“My gramps is a welder. He tried to train me and Whit?— ”

“Whit?”

“My little brother.”

I nodded. That must have been the little brother Poe had told me about, the one who’d gotten mixed up in drugs.

“Anyway, my gramps tried to teach Whit and me how to weld. We both sucked at it, Whit because he didn’t have the discipline to show up for work and me because I didn’t have the discipline to do the job I was given instead of fucking around with what I thought I saw inside every piece of metal.”

I came to a stop near him and tried to see what was inside the metal. “Is that how it works? You see things inside?”

“It doesn’t start out as a vision of a finished product. It’s more like I know where it’s supposed to be twisted or bent. I know what I’m supposed to do next. And then the piece just kind of… I don’t know, reveals itself I guess.”

I looked at him. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

It seemed like a dumb question as soon as I asked it. We’d been around each other for weeks, but the truth was, I’d been avoiding him — or being alone with him at least — since our make-out session on the hood of June’s car.

He held my gaze. “Didn’t think you were interested.”

“I’m interested.”

He picked up my hand and drew me closer, between his legs, like he’d done in the mall parking lot.

My mind screamed danger, but my body was as pliant as the metal under the heat of his torch.

“I’m interested too,” he said, pulling me ever closer.

The heat of his dick pressed against my thighs and my hands flattened against his chest like they had a mind of their own.

He slid his hands into my hair, his eyes as blue as the sea off Aruba the time my parents had taken us for spring break.

I could feel what was coming, already knew I was powerless to stop it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t clear-eyed about the whole thing.

“This is a bad idea,” I said.

“Very.”

We stayed like that for what felt like a long moment but was really only seconds, our gazes locked, and when our mouths finally crashed together, it wasn’t Poe who closed the distance.

It was me.

39

POE

I’d been dreamingabout her mouth for the past two weeks, and now that I had it — now that I had her — I couldn’t get enough. Her tongue parried with mine in a heated dance, and I tightened my grip on her hair and pulled her closer, locking her hips between my thighs.

She slid her arms around my neck and pressed her full tits against my chest, and I stroked her cheeks with my thumbs as I swept her mouth in feverish strokes.