Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,61

were. Bad. “Many. But food, that’s somethin’ simple. A good meal, cooked right, with time and purpose, good ingredients. That’s something that you can savor, enjoy without fucking guilt.

“You’re gonna live a life of shit, Magnolia. You know that, I know that. It’s part of you. Ugly things. Hard things. Pain. That’s coiled up inside you. It’s all gonna follow you around. Because it’s how you make your living. It’s how you structure your life. And it works for you. Your suffering. Don’t like it. I’ll admit that. But I wouldn’t change it. Because I wouldn’t like you without it. That’s just the truth. I’m not gonna control you, you’ve made that clear. And that’s not who I am, a man that controls a woman. But I will make sure you sit the fuck down, eat what I fucking serve because it tastes good. It’s gonna fuel your body, and it’s not gonna hurt you.”

I waited.

For his words to sink in. For my brain to catch up with them. For my rage to take over.

But none of that happened.

Because it made sense.

All of it.

So instead of saying a damn thing, I sat down at the kitchen island, in front of the plate of food, and ate it.

Every damn bite.

Chapter 12

“It was too cold tonight. To stand and watch. And she was with him. Not the right time. He had to be patient. That was okay. He could have for now. Only one man would have her forever.”

He did the dishes.

Again, I didn’t offer to help. Again, that made me an asshole.

He didn’t seem to mind, since he laid me down on the sofa, went down on me, and I returned the favor. That was a job I was glad to do. I loved the control. Power. Which is why it pissed me off I didn’t do it often enough. I had a policy against going down on men who didn’t return the favor. And despite what romance books told every woman looking for hope, very few men liked to do any kind of job that didn’t involve their dick or their own pleasure.

Saint liked it.

A lot.

We hadn’t spoken much. The meal before had been silent.

There were the obvious sounds, grunts, curses of release on the sofa, but nothing else.

I didn’t have the urge. And I worried words might ruin it, would make me think too much. For once, I didn’t want to think. I wanted to be the woman that could dive into something like this. For a hot second.

Saint sat down beside me, after refilling my wine and starting a fire.

“You’re going to ruin your reputation,” I said, sipping the wine and staring at the flames.

He stared at me. It hadn’t changed. That cold, hard, emotionless stare. A lot of women think it should, after all the sex. That something should change. That everything should change.

But it was sex.

Not intimacy.

We were two strong, damaged people. Sex—even some of the best I’d ever had—wasn’t about to change years of trauma.

Nothing was about to change that.

“My reputation is plenty ruined,” he replied, sipping his wine.

“Well you’ll un-ruin it, doing things like making fires and feeding the women you fuck.”

His gaze hardened slightly. “Don’t do that for every woman I fuck.”

I tilted my head. “I’m special?”

“Something like that,” he muttered.

Neither of us spoke for a minute, my mind wandering around to my book. To Emily.

“Did you know Emily well?” I asked, suddenly curious about how Saint seemed so at home in my neck of the woods.

His jaw ticked. He didn’t answer straight away. “Somethin’ like that.”

I caught it because it wasn’t hard to catch. Saint was even almost all of the time, so even the smallest change told me things.

This chilling tone, the stiffening of his posture told me a lot.

“You and Emily were…?”

“Fucking,” he finished gruffly.

I swallowed down an unexpected bout of jealousy for the dead woman, even though I’d already figured as much. I’d seen photos of her. She was a stone-cold hottie. Before the grisly murder, of course.

Regarding Saint, I asked exactly what popped into my head, after the annoying bout of jealousy, of course. “Did you kill her?”

His demeanor didn’t change. Not even an eyebrow tick. Whereas most people would at least feign offense at a relative stranger asking them if they committed murder, it seemed as if Saint had almost expected me to ask.

He left the question hanging in the air. On purpose, of course. I knew he was trying to intimidate me. He was trying to

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