Skin Trade(36)

I pulled to move away. I couldn’t help it. He tightened his grip, let me know he had me, or that it would be a fight to get away. Just an instant of it, a moment, but it was enough to remind me of the last time we’d met.

Olaf and I had been the ones to take the hearts out of the vampires last time we hunted. They were old and powerful, so you don’t just stake the heart. You cut it out of the chest cavity and destroy it with fire later.

I’d gotten the heart tangled somehow on some bit of viscera in the body. He’d offered to help, and I’d accepted. I’d forgotten what he was.

He slid his hand inside the hole I’d made, so that his arm slid up alongside mine in the chest cavity. It wasn’t until his hand cupped mine, pressing both our hands into the still-warm heart, that I looked at him. We were both leaning over the body, our faces inches apart, with our arms up the much longer torso of the male. He looked at me over the body, our hands around the heart, blood everywhere. He looked at me as if it were a candlelit dinner and I was wearing nice lingerie.

He’d kept his free hand on my arm, controlling how slowly we eased out of the chest cavity. He made it last, and he stared at my face while we did it. For the last few inches of arm he looked down at the wound and not at my face. He watched our arms emerge from the bloody hole just under the sternum. He kept his hand on my arm and forced our hands upward, so that for a moment we held the heart together, and he looked at me over the bleeding muscle.

He’d stolen a kiss like that, our first and, if I could help it, our last.

“Let go of me,” I said, softly, each word very clear.

His lips parted, and his breath came out in a long sigh. It was worse than the smile. I realized in that moment that I had become a trophy of that kill. A trophy for a serial killer is something they take from the victim or the murder scene, so that when they see it, or touch it, or hear it, or smell it, or taste it, it brings back the memory of the slaughter.

I did my best not to show fear, but I probably failed. Edward actually stepped up beside us and said, “You heard her.”

He turned his eyes behind the sunglasses toward Edward. The last time we’d all been together, Edward had done what he could to protect me, but protecting me from Olaf now wasn’t just a matter of guns and violence. Edward had taken my arm that last time, as if I were a girl and needed to be led. It was the first time, ever, that Edward had touched me as if I were a girl, because I was never just a girl to him. He’d put the idea into Olaf’s head that he, Edward, thought of me as a girl, maybe his girl. Maybe a girl he’d be willing to protect. I wouldn’t have let anyone else endanger themselves for a lie, but if anyone I knew could handle Olaf, it was Edward. Besides, he was Edward’s friend before he was mine, so it was sort of Edward’s fault that Olaf had a crush on me.

Now, Edward did it again. He put his arm around my shoulders. It was a first. It also wouldn’t help my reputation with the other cops, but I wasn’t worried about the cops. All I was worried about in that moment was the man with his hands on my arm and hand. It was such an innocent touch, but the effect it had on him, and on me, was about as far from innocent as you could get.

Edward put his arm across my shoulders, less than a hug but very much about marking territory. It’s something that high school athletes are fond of doing with their cheerleading girlfriends. Again, a fairly innocent gesture, but it was a sign of possession. This is mine, not yours.

I was so not Edward’s, but in that moment I might have volunteered to be anyone’s if it would just get Olaf off me. I was fighting off the memory of our last kill together, and it was making my skin run cold even in the Vegas heat.

Olaf gave Edward the full weight of that sunglass-covered gaze, and then, slowly, he let go of me. He stepped back from us.

Edward kept his arm across my shoulders and looked up at the bigger man. I just stood there and fought the urge to shiver, and finally lost. In a heat so hot it made it hard to breathe, I shivered.

It made Olaf smile again, and for just a moment I had the very clear thought that someday I would kill him. Maybe not this day, or even this time, but eventually he’d cross a line and I would kill him. The thought helped steady me. Helped me feel more myself. It helped me smile back at him, but it wasn’t the same smile. His was damn near sexual; mine was the smile, most unpleasant, that has frightened bad guys across the country.

Olaf frowned at me. Which made me smile wider.

Edward squeezed my shoulders in a one-armed hug, then stepped back.

I caught the glances of some of the cops who were outside the station. They’d watched the show. I doubted they understood everything they’d seen. But they’d seen enough to pick up the tension between Olaf and Edward and me. They’d draw the same conclusion that Olaf did, that Edward and I were a couple and it was hands-off.