And, to my relief, Annie Castro-Tan is far, far smarter.
“If you’re so concerned for my safety, you’d know admitting to a strange man that I live alone with my grandmother is the worst possible thing I could do.”
I crane my neck down at her. “Worse than inviting that strange man into your home?” Her mouth twists. “Worse than bringing him into your room? Inviting him to sleep in your bed?”
“Inviting you into my bed, and plopping you there because the other rooms are occupied with my dead relatives’ belongings are two very different things.”
“Having him undress for you?”
“You haven’t asked me about a father,” she challenges. “My dead grandfather.” Her fingers then curl around to the front of my waistband, her nails slippingintoit—not loosening or measuring anything. Annie’s testing the fabric between us. “What is it you’re asking me, Jacques?”
I exhale, unsteady. Her knuckles graze my skin as they sink deeper, and I feel the contact a bit too sharply, as though my nerves are tuned too finely. I don’t move, not because I can’t, but because I can’t trust myself to. My skin flushes and prickles, like something is trying to break outward as my body awaits a command it hasn’t yet received.
As if realizing what she’s doing, she looks up, and whatever she sees in my expression makes her breath hitch.
Still, she steps closer.Quelle petite sotte.
The corner of Annie’s mouth lifts, and she teeters on her toes until her breath ghosts my jaw. I can just about taste her, feel her running through my fingers. “You understand that I am sick, don’t you? That I’ve caught whatever ails this town?”
Annie just laughs. “And I walk amongstthem every day. Chat with them. Work with them. The dying are next door to our shop. It’s only a matter of time.”
She shouldn’t think that way. The mere thought of any harm coming to her grips me in rage. The thought of being responsible for it sends anguish ripping through my chest.
Swallowing, I step back. I’ve forgotten myself. My honor, my manners.
“I should leave,” I manage, but then one of her hands goes to my face, her thumb repeatedly stroking my tensed jaw until it loosens.
“You don’t want to.”
I don’t. I don’t, because she’s made me forget why I came here, the things I’m running from and the case I’m meant to be solving. She’s made me forget the blood on the streets and the ghosts in my lungs, and because there’s something in her—stubborn, and grieving, and warm—that calls out to something deep in me.
She’s lost, too. Her uncle, her mother. She knows the pain of a family broken disassembled into nothing but empty rooms and folded clothes collecting dust.
I’ve carried absence like a second skin; my mother’s prayers the night before she left, years before I’d even begun my training. The gaping hole she left in our home. My father’s death that feels like a lifetime ago… showing up repeatedly to the Commissaire, begging the police there for answers. A simple mugging, or attempted robbery, is how they classified it. The investigation stalled once they discovered it was the brilliant private detective who often made their jobs more difficult with his unconventional methods and penchant for empathy.
My father’s name became well known; he’d submerged himself in his craft of giving people answers. Closure over arrests. And no one did the same for him.
I’d never anticipated how deafening loss could be untilthe day it echoed through my bones, ravaging me from the inside out.
But Annie understands this feeling. As strong-willed as she is, she’s as marked by grief as I am. This type of loneliness doesn’t fade. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to her, because there’s a reflection there. I’m sure there are days she’s collapsed upon this very floor like I have.
What would it take to be the one who caught her then?
“No,” I croak, barely audible.
“Then say that instead.”
And I do. Except, I say it in the form of her name, and bend to kiss her like I’m starving.
Because I am.
Her palm slides down the front of my trousers the tender moment her tongue meets mine. She wraps her hands around my girth, gasping and smiling into my mouth as I lift her. She’s not a short woman, broad-shouldered with unbelievable curves under her loose clothing that I can now feel, but she weighs next to nothing with all of the adrenaline slamming through me.
“My dresser,” she says feverishly, wrapping her legs around me. I hesitate—there are things there, some of her belongings, but her voice is thick her want. “You wouldn’t care if I offered you to taste me.”
At this, I am not only a man starved, but parched. Without another word, I turn and sit her upon it, and she sweeps her hands across the top to make room, knocking a cup and several compacts off. Annie then unbuttons the top of her blouse—three down, just enough to bare her cleavage, when three more would have removed the garment altogether.
Tu oses me braver ainsi. At this moment, her very existence is a provocation.