There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(64)

Twelve minutes.

I lean against the glass, eyes closed, my whole body rocked by the hulking industrial machine. These dryers are probably older than I am. Each one the size of a compact car. Each with a powerful engine.

The bell above the door lets out a gentle chime as someone enters.

I keep my face pressed against the glass, eyes closed.

I hear him coming up behind me, though no one else would hear those careful, measured steps.

I can even hear the lonely sound of each breath entering and exiting his lungs.

Without turning around, I say, “Hello, Cole.”

In the glass I see his reflection: wet hair, blacker than a crow’s wing, plastered against his cheeks. Dark eyes fixed only on me.

Rain drips down from the hem of his coat to the linoleum tiles.

“Hello, Mara.”

He swoops in behind me, pressing me against the dryer. His body is soaked and frigid, the hard muscle of his chest locked against my back. Against my belly, the dryer rocks and hums, spreading warmth all the way through me into Cole.

He traps me there, a moth on a windshield.

I can feel his heart racing against my shoulder blade. I feel his hot breath on my neck.

“It’s time for you to stop hiding,” he whispers against my throat. “It’s time for you to come home.”

Terror surges through me—that rush of adrenaline that sends blood surging through every distant capillary, until my whole body throbs like a drum. Cole’s scent envelopes me, not washed away by the rain, only enhanced by it.

If Cole is so bad, then why does he feel so good?

Who knows what the rabbit feels when the hawk lands, pinning it to the ground? When those cruel talons close around its body. When it lifts up into the sky . . .

Maybe the moment of capture is bliss.

Maybe it feels like flying.

All I know is my whole body is thrumming in time to the dryer. Cole presses my chest, my belly, my hips against it. Grinding me into it. Never letting up on the pressure for even a moment.

“You want me to come to your house?” I gasp.

“Yes,” he growls, his chest vibrating just like the dryer, the heat and the pressure making my head spin.

“No,” I say, closing my eyes and shaking my head.

His hands grip my hips, fingers digging in. He pushes me harder against the glass.

The vibration is having a certain effect on me. I can feel my skin flushing, my pulse quickening, that rushing, clenching feeling that you can only hold back for so long.

“Why do you always have to be so difficult?” he growls.

I turn my head slightly, so we’re cheek to cheek, mouths only an inch apart.

“I want to see your studio,” I demand.

I can feel his irritation. Hear his molars grinding.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Tomorrow night.”

This is madness. I shouldn’t be going to his studio or his house. I should be calling the cops.

But the cops won’t believe me. They never have.

Is Cole my mentor or a killer? Is he protecting me, or hunting me?

There’s only one way to learn the truth.

Cole slips his hand down the front of my shorts. He finds my pussy already slippery and throbbing. Desperate for his touch.

I let out a long moan as he pushes his fingers inside me.

He shoves me against the dryer, grinding my hips against the door. I can feel his cock pressed between my ass cheeks. The warmth and the rumbling vibration surge through me, over and over, with every turn of the clothes. It only takes three thrusts with his fingers, three pulses of his hips against my ass, before I start to cum.

I’m moaning and shaking, grinding against the dryer. Cole holds me in place with his wet, steaming body. Pressing me against the vibration, sending each new wave surging through me.

“Seven o’clock tomorrow night,” he growls in my ear. “No fucking around this time. If you’re one minute late . . . I’m coming to find you.”

I can hardly hear him over the dryer. Over the hot, liquid pleasure pounding in my ears.

All in a moment, he’s gone. The buzzer sounds, the dryer stops, and I’m standing there, legs shaking, realizing that I’m definitely fucking crazy.





29





Cole





As I make my preparations for Mara’s arrival, I go back and forth a hundred times on how I should kill her.

I’ve never been indecisive before.

I’ve always known exactly what I should do, as if it already happened.

She clouds my mind. She darkens my ability to see.

If I remove her from my life, I’ll go back to the way I was before. I’m sure of that.

The problem is . . . I don’t know if I want to go back.

Mara warps who I am. But in the moment, when I’m with her . . . I like it. I see things I never saw before. I feel things. Hell, I even taste things differently.

She’s electric. I touch her, and the current runs through me. She lights me up, turns me on, fills me with energy.

The cost is the loss of control.

Control has always been my highest priority. The thing that made me unique. The source of all my power.

I can’t give that up. I can’t become like everyone else.

In the end, it’s Mara who made the choice: I invited her to my home. She asked to come to the studio instead.