Menace (Scarlet Scars #1)(39)

“Thank you,” she says quietly as she reappears in the doorway, clutching a clear bottle of something. Rum… vodka… something. She takes a drink of it, lingering there, leaning against the doorframe, her eyes questioning as they regard me… as they watch me smelling my coat, like some panty-sniffing pervert.

I shrug, zipping it up. “It smells like you.”

“What do I smell like?”

“Like sex and shame,” I say, smirking at the scowl she directs my way as I inhale again. “And something distinctly vanilla.”

“It’ll fade.” She takes another large swig of the liquor, grimacing, before continuing. “It’s just my lotion… vanilla orchid. The sex, well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wash that off.”

“And the shame?” I ask, strolling toward her. “How long until that fades?”

She laughs dryly. “I’ll let you know if it ever happens.”

I take the liquor from her, glancing at the label. Rum. The bottle’s made of flimsy plastic, utterly cheap, the kind of rum that puts hair on chests and can put a motherf*cker through puberty again. It’s not for the faint of heart, no, but neither is she.

She’s gritty and raw, but goddamn, the woman is beautiful. The more I look at her, the more I see it.

I take a swig, not reacting to the bitterness, and hand it back as I stare down at her. “Why don’t you lock your door, Scarlet?”

“No point,” she says. “Locks won’t stop someone determined to get in.”

“So you make it easy for them?”

“I’m just realistic. I could seal myself up in here tight, with a hundred locks on the windows and doors, but all that’ll do is trap me, like some caged animal, and I refuse to do it. Besides, you know, all of this?” She waves around the apartment. “None of it means anything to me. If people want to help themselves to it, so be it… they can have it all.”

She takes another swig before pushing away from the doorframe. Shoving by me, she strolls across the room, that vanilla scent wafting toward me.

“I hate to break it to you,” I say, glancing around, “but I don’t think you could give half of this shit away. No offense, but it all kind of looks like, well… shit.”

“That’s because it is,” she says, pausing at the window to look out. “Most of it I found or stole.”

“What do you do with all of your money?”

“Is that your business now?”

“No.”

“So why are you asking?”

Why am I asking? I don’t know. I don’t even know why I’m here, why I’m bothering with this woman at all. “Just trying to riddle you out.”

“Don’t bother,” she mutters as I stroll closer, pausing behind her. “My problems are my own.”

“Ah, come on. You can spill all your secrets to me, Scarlet. I’m good at pretending to listen.”

She laughs, a genuine kind of laugh, as she tilts her head, regarding my reflection in the grimy, cracked glass of the living room window. “I’m sure you are, but I learned long ago not to bare my soul to just anyone. It seems to make people think they’re entitled to every part of me, like I owe them everything and can keep nothing for myself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not just anyone,” I tell her. “Besides, it’s a little late to try to keep everything under lock and key, considering what went down tonight. So how about you show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”

She turns around, eyebrow raised as she leans back against the cold glass. It’s chilly in the apartment, the heat barely working, but that doesn’t seem to bother her. Not much does.

“Go on,” she says. “You first.”

“Me first?”

She nods. “Excuse me if I don’t trust you to live up to your end of it, considering the bullshit you tried to feed me last time. So yeah, you first.”

“Fair enough.” I pause, trying to think of something to tell her, something dark enough to entice her own little demons to want to peek out and join me today. “I’ve killed people.”

“You’ve killed people.”

“Yes.”

She stares at me. Hard. She doesn’t look horrified. Hell, she kind of looks bored again. “That’s your big, dark secret? That you’re a murderer?”

I shrug a shoulder. “Not dark enough?”

“It’s plenty dark,” she says. “It’s just not exactly a secret.”

Well, damn.

“I lie, cheat, steal, rob, pillage, plunder, slaughter... seventy-five other f*cking words you find in a dictionary associated with the word ‘criminal’.”

“That’s nice, that you know how one of those works,” she says. “That’s kind of vague, though.”

“You want details?”

“I want something I don’t already know.”

Pressing my hands to the windowpane on either side of her, I lean closer. Her breath hitches, her eyes fixed to mine, back flat against the glass. She’s flustered, having me so close.

“I wanted to kill your boss tonight,” I tell her. “I showed up, walked into his office, wanting to end his life, but then I saw you were working. You were on one of the screens, leading that man into the back, and just like that, I changed my mind. Because while killing him would’ve been a thrill, it wasn’t nearly as enticing as you. He lived to see another day thanks to the little hero in red fishnet thigh-highs.”