Page 196 of Lau Ahi
His smile was small and gone so fast I would’ve thought I imagined it if it hadn’t been accompanied by the shot of pure lust that hardened my nipples and had my stomach clenching as it traveled to my clitoris.
“Can I speak plainly?”
I wonder if he knew how much his asking permission instead of demanding things of me turned me on. “Of course you can. There’s not a time you ever have to ask that with me.”
“I appreciate the leeway but I’ll still reserve the right for caution. But what I was going to say was, you like what you do. It makes you feel you have more control than you had before. Your world shifted that day. There’s no shifting it back although I’m sure you’ve tried because that’s just how you are.” He rubbed my thighs for comfort but still felt like a sensual caress.
“You think you bloody know me?” I could only murmur out the words since they were true and I didn’t have the means to fight him with a lie. That’s not what we did. Our situation although not based on love was based on respect and I respected him too much to lie to him. Even if it pained me for him to know my truth.
“I know how it feels to have your life completely change in an instant. You’re struggling to figure out how to get back to being who you were and that person is gone. And so you struggle against your new reality. You can be angry and sad trying to find balance that isn’t really there.”
“That sounds all too accurate for your words to be anything but a testimony.”
He squeezed my ass that he was palming between his massive hands like it was a stress reliever. “It is. But we’re talking about you now.”
“Fair enough. But will you ever become the topic of conversation, husband mine?”
“Whenever you want. I told you about my dad so that’s a good first step. You've gotta remember it’s only been recent that you started giving a fuck about me. So, I might be a little slow on the uptake with sharing but I’ll get there.”
“Outside of your dick, maybe. He was always all right with me.”
His brow rose as did his ladder, which was extending itself rung by rung to poke me in my core just right. “Just alright?”
“I’m not going to stroke your ego at a time like this.”
He leaned up and nuzzled the side of my neck my nipples brushing his bare chest. I wanted to wrap my arms around him but I was unsure if I should, with how turbulent my emotions were. “That’s alright. I’ll be stroking your insides soon enough and then you won’t have a choice but to voice how you really feel, will you?”
I threw my head back and laughed but my walls clenched in anticipation because I truly wanted to feel him. I could still feel him from last night but he made me greedy. And needy. “You are a conceited bastard but I can’t say that you don’t have every reason in the world to be with your prowess.”
“Look at you. Finally, being honest with yourself.” I allowed my hips to roll over his length sure that the wetness of his crotch was as much my fault as the ocean’s.
“To answer your earlier question, husband, I did. I tried to learn everything I could about him and my reason was as I said. I needed to know everything I could because the thought of someone like him running around unabated, shielded by his normalcy unnerved me. You hear about people like Jason Brandt and you make assumptions that something had to be missed or someone decided that punishing him for being a piece of shit was less important than actually protecting the public from what he could become.”
His brows rose as though he was connecting with something but he had a question to ensure that his thoughts were accurate. “Is that what you found? If so, then I guess I understand the disdain that you have for the government and law enforcement agencies when we met.”
“He was so fucking normal it was obscene.”
He leaned back knowing the weight of how often he saw so-callednormal peoplewalk around freely but were monsters. “Shocking, right?”
“That doesn’t even begin to encompass what it was. I was… petrified I think.” I sat back but Ori kept his hands at my waist.
“Is that what changed you?”
“Yes. I guess? That’s what made all of this interest I had in serial killers and the mind possible. There was no way that I could continue to walk around as though everything was fine when I knew it wasn’t. That there were demons that lurked beneath the shadows yet I was supposed to walk around and pretend that nothing changed? The hypocrisy of it all, the denial of my truth was probably more damaging than anything.” My eyes went past Ori and out onto the ocean that was lapping gently behind our vessel.
His face contorted aggressively and I was sure murder was on his mind. “Who wanted you to deny it?”
“My family. Specifically, my mother. They wanted me to go back as though nothing was wrong and I was infuriated. It was like they were erasing a part of me and even having to claim what happened as a part of me disgusted me and quite frankly pissed me off.” I stretched my neck from side to side the tension even speaking her name building up in my joints.
“You can’t see what happened as something that you endured but something that you were strong enough to survive, Ka’iulani. And them wanting you to move past it was almost like denying your strength so I get it. Is that when you cut your hair?”
“Oh my God, you really are thorough in your research aren’t you?” I thought the internet had scrubbed the photos of when I’d taken my father’s clippers to my head and shorn off every lock. It was after I’d killed the earl and I wanted a fresh start. I’d rubbed myself raw after Brandt and after my second murder but it wasn’t enough. I hated the feeling of anything touching me so I’d cut off every strand of hair on my head. My mother wanted to have me committed on the continent so none of her friendswouldn’t know but my father insisted I would be fine. I’m not sure who was actually right.
“We couldn’t really say that we were a multinational criminal organization if we left stones unturned now could we? Kinda taints the image if we aren’t thorough.”
“I’d have to agree but I’d hope those images had been scrubbed away a long time ago.”
Ori squeezed my waist making me feel less exposed. My vulnerability safe with him like he’d shown every other part of me had been thus far. “They have been now, but why is that what you wanted then? You were a baddie even with a bald head.”
