“We?”
“Jules and I. My friend, the one that was there. She called you Fabio afterward, because of how you looked.”
“Oh? How did I look? I don’t have that stunning long blond hair.”
I looked up at Gavriel as he sat down next to me. I didn’t know if it was because he’d untied me, or because I’d finally gotten him off, but I felt like we were having a normal conversation for the first time. It was weirder than any other conversation we’d had, strangely enough. Like we’d known each other for longer than we actually had.
“Come on. You know how you look.”
“Well-groomed?”
“Attractive. Much hotter than any guy that normally comes into the library, that’s for damn sure.”
He laughed. With the early afternoon light coming in through the window, the room felt cozy. Romantic. If I hadn’t known that I had just been bound up on the bed, thinking this man was going to kill me, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.
“I don’t think I could be on the cover of a romance novel.”
“I think you could.” I flopped down on my back and let my eyes skim over the pages without reading anything. “That could be your new career.”
“Stop killing people and start ravishing virgins?”
“Sure, why not?” We were flirting. This was so weird.
“I only picked up one virgin book, but there were dozens of them on the shelf. What is it about romance novels where the heroine has to be a virgin?”
“Easy. She has to be perfect,” I said. “Or at least perfectly innocent. The heroes too.”
“Mmm?”
“That’s the thing about the heroes in these kinds of books - they’re always so perfect. Perfect looks, lots of money, super confident, huge cocks. They’re book boyfriends.”
“Book boyfriends?”
“You’ve never heard of that? Like, if you really like a guy from a book, if you’re totally obsessed with him. You pretend he’s your book boyfriend. It’s a way to imagine yourself dating a charming billionaire.”
“I kill billionaires. They’re usually horrible people.”
“Come on, Fabio.” I swatted him with the paperback. At least he was talking about killing other people and not me.
“My name is Gavriel.”
“Super hot, super rich, super big cock. You don’t think you’d make a good book boyfriend?”
“I’m not a goddamn book boyfriend.” His words were flat, and although his mouth was curved, the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He’d lost the flirtatious manner he had when he walked in.
“No?”
Gav stood up and walked to the window. I thought he would just ignore me, but then he spoke again. His voice was lower, more serious. His long fingers tapped the windowsill as he spoke.
“I kill your book boyfriends. Your billionaires, your CEOs. I carve them limb from limb and destroy the evidence. Nobody could ever mistake me for a hero.”
“No. No, I suppose not.” I licked my lips. I didn’t know what to say. “Thanks anyway. For the books.”
He turned back to me, his face pleasant and inviting again. The light pouring in through the window illuminated his front, shone through his white shirt and gave him a halo around his dark hair. He was wrong. Standing there, all smooth planes and hard lines of muscle, he looked exactly like a hero. But I knew better.
“Aren’t you going to use them to pleasure yourself?” he asked.
“What, the books? Like, right now?”
“Yes.”
An idea sparked in my mind and made it to my tongue before I spent any time thinking about it.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“A trade?”
He smiled.
“You know me too well, kitten. What do you want from this trade?”
That was easy. There was one thing I’d been dreaming about for all the hours he had me locked up in the basement, for all the hours he had me tied up to his bedposts.
“Take me outside.”
His eyes flashed dangerously as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
“Outside?”
“Just for a little walk. My legs are so cramped from staying inside.”
He thought for a moment, one hand stroking his chin where his black stubble had been growing like a lawn after the spring’s first rainstorm. Such a liar. He would be perfect on a cover. The Pirate Rogue, I thought to myself. The Handsome Killer.
“Yes. That’s a fair trade.”
He sat down in the arm chair next to the bed and motioned to the books.
“Well?”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Are you going to stay and watch?”
“Of course. This is a trade, after all. How could I be sure you’d truly pleasured yourself unless I was a witness?”
I blushed, then cursed myself for blushing. God, here I was with a murderer, a serial killer, someone who I’d tried to kill, and I was embarrassed to have him watch me get myself off while reading a romance novel. Some things just don’t make sense.
“I’m not really in the mood right now,” I said.
“That’s what the books are for.”