Page 48 of Insidious Heart
“All night?”
He grunts a few times then responds. “Well, the rest of this evening and then all night. Probably first thing in the morning too before Calvin comes back. Gonna have to split before that.”
“So, you’re staying?”
“Only if you want me to.”
God, yes.“I think I’d like that.”
“Good. I didn’t really plan on giving you a choice.”
“Are you sure though? Do you think it’s a good idea? There are a lot of people hanging around downstairs.”
Victor pops up down by my knees and grins. “People have been here every other time I have, all except when I cleaned your room, and if I’m not mistaken, I just brought you to orgasm twice with apeopleright on the other side of that door and it wasn’t a problem.”
I giggle as he dips his head and runs his tongue up the side of my thigh, licking my skin and scars without anything but devious intent in his gaze. Victor uses his nose to push my scrub top up, kissing my hip and my side until his hand replaces his mouth. He leans toward me as his fingers ghost along my ribs toward my breast, and just as I prepare myself for another of his brutal kisses and what it means, he frowns.
“Did Cal say he was locking your room from the outside?”
Shit.
There goes the happy little bubble I was excited to spend the next twelve hours in.
“Yeah… it’s for my…safety.”
Victor looks up at the door, his frown deepening as his eyes bounce from the deadbolt to knob lock, then back to me with lots of questions.
And I just sigh because I really don’t want to get into this right now. “There are two padlocks on the other side of my door.”
“Two padlocks…” His frown somehow intensifies. “In addition to the deadbolt and knob?”
I nod.
“And Cal is taking the key for the padlocks with him, which means—”
“I can’t get out and no one else can get in.”
“What about…”
He’s definitely referring to Joker. “Whoever is keeping watch has the keys while they’re here but my father doesn’t trust the prospects or new patches enough to let them have it. Joker kept it and now that he’s gone, Cal will.”
Victor shakes his head as he sits back on his haunches. “I don’t understand. Why are they locking you in like that? And what happens if there’s some kind of fucking emergency?”
“President’s daughter and all that.” I shrug, hoping like hell my answer will be enough. “I need to be protected at all times. Beau hardly trusts anyone with anything, let alone my safety, and he figures if there’s an emergency one of his men will just shoot the locks off in order to get me out.”
Judging by the way he’s scowling at the door, Victor is not satisfied with my explanation. We barely know each other, and are still practically strangers, but I can tell by the look on his face that things aren’t adding up for him.
If he keeps coming around, I’ll tell him everything. Hell, he’ll probably end up seeing me after a lecture if that’s the case, but I don’t want to get into all that now. I want to continue living in blissful ignorance, pretending that Victor is mine and we’re spending the night together like any other couple would, just being together in my bedroom after sex, maybe talking or watching tv the way normal people do.
Then again, nothing about this isnormal.
Normal couples probably don’t meet in dark parking lots and discuss serial killers, nor do they experience murder together and have sex for the first time without knowing each other’s names right after said murder. Most people’s boyfriends probably don’t go around making murder or crime scene cleanup a hobby, and I highly doubt it would turn anyone on the way it did me.
Even so, those aren’t the things I want to pretend didn’t happen or don’t exist. Being the daughter of a horrible MC president that beats me, living like a prisoner in my childhood home, fearing everything that happens outside these four walls as well as most of the men lurking around inside them.That’swhat I want to pretend doesn’t happen or exist.
It’s extremely silly to compare myself or Victor to normal people, though. Outside of going to school and working, there is very little about my life that could be considered such, and obviously my ghost—theghost—is extraordinary at best, abnormal at worst, and Victor has added another layer of strange and unusual to my days that I would never change.
But I’m jumping the gun to compare what we’re doing to any kind of relationship with a label. Sleeping with him twice hardly warrants thinking of Victor as my potential boyfriend, and I’m sure the fact that the thought is even crossing my mind means there is something seriously wrong with me.
