Page 38 of Insidious Heart
“I will. King and Prince are always great for me.”
A muscle in Cal’s jaw ticks and I swear he’s biting his tongue but it passes quickly before his blue eyes swing my way again. “Gonna have new patches and prospects on the house this week.”
My stomach drops at his words, but not because of my new security detail.
No, it’s the reasonwhyI have to have a new security detail that makes me panic.
Joker is dead and I fucked the guy who killed him.
Thankfully—or not, depending on how you look at it—my bedroom is still a crime scene that rivals most I’ve seen in my true crime documentaries, but Beau is still gone so no one has been in there but me.
My mysterious one-night stand cleaned up quite a bit before he left, even took care of my busted armchair and ottoman, but the carpet is ruined and stained by what would clearly be seen as blood to even the untrained eye. Not to mention, there is spray on the wall and drops in other various locations, all of which were scrubbed but not enough to be able to ignore what they are.
I wasn’t expecting my very own ghost to do what he did after he killed for me, but I was wrong about that and not just in terms of fucking me up against the wall and successfully delivering my first purely sex-induced orgasms post murder.
My cheeks flame at the memory.
The way my ghost claimed me in a filthy and depraved, almost primal, act after he saved my life and ended another. How he came to my rescue when no one else has ever given me a second thought. Everything he said, the way he both brutalized and cherished my body, how he left a mark on my neck that I have to use makeup to cover. All of it was so morbidly romantic I couldn’t help but become completely infatuated with the man I briefly interacted with in a dark parking lot. But I also wasn’t stupid enough to think it was anything more than some one-off because of the adrenaline or something.
Which is why it surprised me when he put me to bed and let me sleep while he took care of some of the mess, even more so when I woke up in the middle of the night to find him totally naked in my bathroomtaking care ofwhat was left of Joker while quietly singing to himself.
Yeah, he wassinging “Hand Clap” by Fitz and the Tantrums—rather impressively—while he dismembered Joker’s body, using the severed hands to clap when appropriate. And while that probably should have scared the shit out of me, or at least made me regret what we’d done, it didn’t. It didn’t scare me, I don’t regret one single thing about what happened, and if anything, I’m itching to see him again.
But my ghost hasn’t come back.
He left sometime before I woke up for the day yesterday, and he didn’t leave any way to contact him, or anything else for that matter. If I wasn’t still deliciously sore from having sex up against the wall, and if my pussy wasn’t still achy from having a dick—apierceddick—that size slammed inside of me repeatedly before I came so hard it almost hurt, I wouldn’t even know he was ever there to begin with. He was, though, and between the way my body feels, the way my carpet looks, and the mark on my neck, I couldn’t deny it even if I wanted to.
And I don’t.
I just wish I knew his name or had some way to reach him so I can really thank him for what he did, and maybe a way to invite him back because I haven’t been able to get him out of my head.
But no one knows any of that but me, even after nearly two days of hiding it.
Which is why I glance at Cal briefly and ask, “Still nothing from Joker?”
He shakes his head. “Bastard has been awol since he sent the prospects home.”
“Huh.” I lied and told my father when he called yesterday that I hadn’t seen Joker since after he picked me up from work, casually mentioned he said something about getting beer then said I was locked in my room all night and went to sleep. I’m not a very good liar, but that seemed to suffice him enough to get off the phone.
“Beau is pissed, but he’s too busy to look for him. Told me to just increase security until the bastard turns up again.”
“Which is why you took me to work this morning.”
Cal nods.
“When is Dad supposed to be back?”
“Not til after the run. We’re meeting him in Sabine Woods to take off from there,” he grunts with an annoyed look on his face.
That’s a relief.
If Beau came home tonight after dealing with that other club, he’d definitely be in some sort of altered state, and having Joker still MIA would royally piss him off. And that would mean he wouldn’t think twice about barging into my bedroom to drag me out of it in order to take his anger out on me.
Crisis temporarily averted, but that means I have between now and tomorrow morning when Cal drops off Prince to figure out how the hell to clean up my room since the boys usually bunk in there with me so I can still get locked in at night.
Ugh.
“You, uh…” Cal clears his throat and grips the steering wheel tight. “I’m gonna be a minute in the hardware store…”
