Page 1 of From the Shadows

Chapter 1

Latex

JESS

I pause, hand halfway into a pink latex glove, and listen.

“Here, let’s just…” Her hand glides down my length, coating me in—of course she fucking has coconut oil in that bag. “Hold on. I just need to get a good grip.” She snickers as her fingers slide over the ring of death, not gaining any purchase. “Um… wow. That, uh, might have been⁠—”

“Counterproductive,” I finish, running through baseball stats, trying to think of my sweet granny without actually thinking of her while my cock gets impossibly harder. “Stop. Just… stop stroking me. Oh my fucking God.”

I feel bad for about a hot minute when she jumps back from me, hands up. Her lip taking some serious abuse between her teeth. But then the panic really starts settling in. I can’t think.

Of course I can’t think. There’s no blood flow to my thinking brain.

The glove snaps into place, making a good crack whip through the air, and I swallow my giggle. This scene in this audiobook is one of my favorites. The Mary Poppins bag full of everything from coconut oil to granny shears… Big-dick Jack and his condom mishaps… Gawd, it makes my knees weak and my lady bits moist.

I crank the volume on my phone and get lost in the wild fling between the soldier and the teacher to drown out the sound my clean suit makes with every single shift. It’s a lot.

It’s annoying.

It’s worse than squeaky sneakers on a basketball court.

Worse than a smoke alarm chirping in the middle of the night.

My shoulders sag as a big old sigh whooshes out of me. I don’t know whether to cringe or smile. Really, there’s no question. The sighs that make me smile come from someone else. Those… those sad, frustrated externalizations of internal manifestations of… nope. Too many big words.

Backtracking, I edit my thoughts to something simpler. He gives life to his sadness in the form of a frustrated sigh. Better, but it could still use some work. A little zhuzh or finesse.

I spend the next several hours listening to the rest of my book while letting the ideas for my own percolate and coalesce in my mind. I have a tendency to overuse big words and that’s a propensity I need to curb. Habit, it’s a habit I need to curb. Even in my own brain.

By the time Jack and Kate are living happily ever after, I’ve got the room fully cleaned, my tools tidied, and am ready to just be done.

I work hard. This job, it’s not easy nor is it for the faint of heart. I’ve completely finished scouring a wet room and disposing of what remains of whoever pissed off the bossman, and I’m wiped. Physically. Mentally. All the adjectives and adverbs.

With a last look to make sure the space is spotless, I begin the process of stripping off my protective layers. Goggles, gloves, suit, booties—all of it gets rolled in on itself and stashed into the bio-disposal bag. Then the process goes in reverse, re-suiting up, though differently, to complete the last step in disposal. Everything gets loaded into the van and secured for the trip around town. The gorge, the dump, the incinerator. It’s just ridiculously time consuming.

Closing and latching the back doors of my custom work van, I pull a pink bandana from my pocket to wipe away the dust covering the stylized logo for my real-life business. I don’t need another job, but cleaning up body parts and laundering the cash that provides me is much easier with a legal gig. Or so my sweet, sad ass of a lawyer tells me.

I mean, he’s not my lawyer. Not really. Because why would I actually need legal counsel? I’m just driving through town in a tricked-out work van advertising elite home and garden services. Forget the fact that there are human remains in the back, or the many bags of biohazard clean-up. Or that the garden chemicals are far more likely to degrade or destroy DNA than they are to win awards for biggest and best tomatoes.

I don’t require an attorney because I’m good at what I do. And because I’m methodical and precise and have a wild eye for details.

I don’t need Edmond Emile Yore, with his sad gray eyes and black wavy hair, those full pouty red lips. I don’t need all his tall, muscly broadness to move product or sling bags of debris. I don’t need those huge hands wrapped around my waist—or my throat. I don’t need them holding me down while he does wild and wicked things to my body…

But holy damn, do I ever want that, especially the last bit.

I bet he’s a wild ride, fucks like a… a… God, I can’t even imagine.

I arch my back and swivel my hips as I lean into the steering wheel, getting lost in all the ways he could use my body and make me feel good. I squirm in the driver’s seat, white-knuckling the steering wheel like that’s going to help the situation in my panties.

It’s not.

I’m hot.

I’m uncomfortable.

Desperate, and…