“Do what?”

“Kiss you. Suck you off. Have your mouth on me. As you said, this is temporary, and I don’t know how you’re going to walk out of this, but if I’m being honest with myself, I think I might get hurt if I let it go further. I’m that type of girl.”

“What type is that?”

“The one who gets attached.”

“You’re stronger than getting attached to the likes of me.”

“I am strong, yes. But being strong doesn’t mean never getting hurt. It means having a high pain tolerance. I’m not dumb enough to amp it up.”

He sobered, scrubbing his cheekbone with his knuckles. Hunter turned off the water, which somehow made me feel even colder. I couldn’t read his face. He had many facial expressions, added proof he was far from stupid.

He regarded me with cold courtesy.

“Is that why you changed your hair? Got a new wardrobe? Because you don’t want us to continue doing this?” he asked evenly. He was too proud and self-assured to be hurt by this.

I let my shoulders rise and fall. “Maybe I wanted to impress you. But you shouldn’t let me.”

“Too late,” he said, reaching for his towel and throwing it into my hands. “But if that’s what you want, I respect that.”

“Do you really?”

He bobbed his head in a silent yes. It felt like the end of something big. Something life-altering. Something Mom and Dad had been praying for.

I wiped myself off as much as I could and returned to the living room with my tail between my legs. None of my friends asked me about my damp hair or sullen expression. I watched them eat, hugged them goodbye, and observed them from the floor-to-ceiling windows as they huddled toward the train station, figures hunched, probably talking about the curious case of the spider.

I dragged myself to bed.

Sleep never came.

Song of the day: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones.

The day after Sailor cockblocked me, everybody seemed deliciously murder-able.

Da was a cunt, Cillian’s horns were extra pointy, and Syllie was holed up in his goddamn office, not doing anything suspicious or noteworthy. Knox was on payroll recording his ass pretty much twenty-four-seven and living in a van to make sure he caught every conversation the fucker had, and still, nothing.

I got hit on by two secretaries who forgot the memo that I was the office airhead or were sent by Da as a test. I turned them down in a less-than-polite fashion (“My cock is on dickation”).

I thought about texting Sailor—came close to doing it three times—but realized it would be selfish.

Anyway, she wasn’t completely wrong.

Our bitch of an arrangement had three months to run its course, and then she was going to beat it (and I would finally stop beating one out).

Obviously, I would be sad to see her go, but keeping her had never been an option. If I had to guess, the loss of Sailor would feel like the loss of a really good pizza some asshole sneezed on. It’d suck balls, but at least I’d have had a taste, and there were more restaurants to choose from.

Anyway.

Sailor wasn’t there when I came home that evening from another grueling night class. This time I did text her, just to make sure she was okay. She was. She texted back that she was returning to the archery club after spending time with Ash and the Sweet’N Low version of the Olsen twins. Sailor was spending a lot of time with Ash, which made me believe maybe I’d see her even after our arrangement was donezo.

Only for that to work, I’d have to pick up my mom’s calls and actually spend time with my family. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, though I’d promised Da to attend family social functions.

The following night, I crashed before Sailor made it home. Today, I’d left her a note with a coffee before I went to work, wishing her a good day, because apparently I was turning into someone’s sweet grandma.

The first thing I noticed at work was that Sylvester wasn’t there.

“Seen Syllie?” I stuck my head into Cillian’s office. He was sitting behind his desk, drowning in refinery blueprints. He was wearing a tailor-made Oxxford and had his hair slicked back neatly. He was punchable to a goddamn fault.

He looked up, his lips puckering in annoyance at my existence. I knew I cramped his style with my general loser-ness. It was like running the White House with David Hasselhoff as vice president.

“His wife is going through a minor medical procedure. He won’t be here today.”

“No shit. She okay?” I couldn’t hide my mirth, which sucked. But his absence meant I could snoop around his office. I hoped it wasn’t anything serious—just like, removing a mole or getting a boob job (if those were even a thing anymore. Everybody knew the world was all about ass-plants now).

“And what, pray tell, made you mistake me for someone who cares?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he shooed me away with a flick of his wrist, his eyes still on the blueprints. “Never mind. Life’s too short to hear your answer.”

“Asshole,” I muttered, glowering at him.

“That, I am. And as one, I tend to shit over those who piss me off. Better step back, ceann beag.”

After those parting words, I bolted to Syllie’s office, drew the blinds to his glass walls, and started sifting through his drawers to find anything that could clue me in on his plans.