Page 36 of Wraith

“Personal time,” Hawk repeats. His voice is flat.

“Yeah.” I lift the wine bottle slightly. “Needed to decompress after that shit. Clear my head. You know how it is.”

“By getting yourself decked out in bondage gear and drinking wine on the floor next to a radiator in some random apartment?” Bruiser’s gun is all the way down now. He’s looking at me the way you’d look at a dog that just started speaking French.

“It’s not random. It’s a rental. Short-term. Very discreet.” I shift slightly, the cuffs clinking against the pipe. “And the cuffs are part of the whole... thing.”

“The whole thing,” Hawk says.

“Yeah. The kinky sex shit.” I gesture vaguely with the wine bottle toward the scattered bondage gear. “With a bunch of wine. It’s therapeutic. You should try it.”

They stare at me.

I stare back.

The apartment is quiet except for the faint drip of the kitchen faucet and the sound of traffic outside and the increasingly loud internal screaming happening inside my skull.

Bruiser holsters his gun. “You’re telling us you disappeared after the shootout at the Devils’ clubhouse, didn’t tell anyone where you were going, and have just been here the whole time getting drunk and… have you been fucking or just jacking off in a gimp suit?”

“Both. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“In bondage gear.”

“Quality bondage gear. You get what you pay for.”

Hawk hasn’t holstered his gun yet. He’s watching me with the intense focus of a man who’s trying to decide if I‘m lying or just deeply, profoundly weird.

“Midnight thought you might‘ve been picked up by the Devils,” he says. “Or the cops. Or that you’d run.”

“Why the fuck would I run?”

“Because we got our asses kicked,” Bruiser says. “Because things are about to get really fucking complicated.”

“Yeah, well.” I take a drink from the wine bottle. It’s empty, so all I get is air and the faint taste of oak and disappointment. “That’s exactly why I needed to decompress. Process my feelings. Work through my trauma in a healthy way.”

“By getting tied up and drunk.”

“And whipped. And jacking it. Look, everyone has their method.”

Hawk finally holsters his gun. “You’re a strange motherfucker, Wraith.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I‘m choosing to take it as one.”

Bruiser crosses his arms. He‘s relaxed now, or as relaxed as Bruiser gets, which means he’s gone from actively planning violence to just thinking about it abstractly. “So where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The one you’re doing this kinky shit with.”

“She left about an hour ago,” I say, which is a lie that comes out smooth because lying is what I do and what I’ve always done. “Had to go to work. She’s got a real job. Responsible. Very into her career.”

“Uh huh.” Bruiser’s eyes sweep the apartment.

“She was going to come back on her lunch break to finish what we started. This is foreplay. We’re building anticipation.”