The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) by Claire Stibbe

asked.
    “Corrales,” he lied.
    She lowered her head, eyes flicking up to his. “I didn’t know you lived so close.”
    “There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.” He couldn’t keep the laughter from his voice and she half smiled in response. “Suppose I take you home and you tell me more about yourself on the way.”
    She didn’t read the insult, the fact that her life would hardly fill the three long minutes to her front door. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss those lips or touch any part of her. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to slash her throat from ear to ear.
    Not yet.
    She eyed the gun in his belt and the car, and then nodded. He opened the passenger door, seeing the curve of her buttocks through that flimsy skirt. He wanted to look away, unable to form the simplest words.
    He drove slowly, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to study the tuxedo shirt he wore, eyes fixed on the flesh at his collarbone. So strangely relaxed for one about to die, unless she was trying not to show any ounce of fear.
    “Home,” he murmured, parking in front of her ground floor apartment. He flexed his left hand, the hand that would snake around that tiny little neck in a moment.
    She slipped off her seat belt and turned to face him. In utter silence she studied him, lifting her chin to expose her neck. “You remind me of someone. I can’t think who.”
    Ole bobbed his head. He could see she was fortified by his smile. It was Morgan’s face on every newspaper, long braid and tattoos etched into his temples. He doubted she would see the similarity. “Perhaps I have an ordinary face.”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You look like an actor.”
    That made all the difference to him. She would trust him if she thought he looked like someone else. He knuckled his forehead in mock concentration then snapped his fingers, rattling off a famous name. Her red painted lips parted, just wide enough to laugh.
    “Trust,” he whispered, “means walking down a dark, empty street without a gun.”
    “I’ve never held a gun, never touched one.”
    “You can touch mine,” he whispered, knowing she hadn’t missed the innuendo.
    She lowered her eyes, shook her head. “They scare me.”
    “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he murmured, trying to decide when to do it, when to lean over and kiss her, when to slide his hands around her neck and hear the frantic gurgle. “I won’t tell your dad.”
    She looked at him then, eyes moist, like she suddenly knew what he was thinking. Only she was oblivious to what was going on his mind, even his hesitation. “How well do you know him?”
    “Let’s just say… better than he knows me.”
    He was getting closer to the edge, as if he would tumble into that ravine at any moment. How could it be so hot sitting next to her? Yet his mind was so cold.
    Then he heard her say his name as if he’d been thinking for too long, grounding him, bring him back. She even smiled, brightened, like she was enjoying his company. He wasn’t listening to her voice. Not really. It was just a blur of words, the type you hear in a bar, the type that bores the pants off any regular guy.
    But he wasn’t any regular guy. He was as welcome as a foreboding dream, as eloquent as grim poetry on a prison wall. Even when he took a single strand of her hair and wound it round his finger, he was still a killer.
    She had got him at his name. Ole . It sounded odd and nice at the same time. He didn’t feel vile, not anymore, not by a longshot. “Have you ever kissed a man?” he said.
    There was nothing more exciting than a kiss. Doing it well was another matter.
    “Yes,” she said, cheeks flushing, hands flat on her thighs.
    Ole threw up his head. “Show me.”
    When she hung back, he took the lead, kissing her lightly on the lips. And then on the cheeks and neck. She seemed to like it.
    He liked it far more than he thought he would, and he stopped for a moment to look at her