of blood and lies ; dystopian

3

Past

I sat at the bar, ignoring the weight of Karro's curious eyes.

I was oblivious to him. In his eyes, I was an insensible girl, aware of her surroundings. I was a damsel, ignorant of the cold-blooded murderer sitting beside me.

I wrapped my blood-painted lips around the straw of my margarita. I made sure that my lips rolled just enough to catch his attention; to make him wonder about how my lips would feel around his cock, instead of a straw.

A drop of tequila remained on my plump lips. I slowly licked it off, looking up at him through my lashes as I did. I met the sage of his eyes.

He tensed.

"A margarita in a sports bar? Bizarre." Karro sipped whiskey from his crystal glass. His eyes were still on my lips. I bit my tongue and forced back the smile I wanted to wear. Men were so fucking easy.

There was a seat in between us. I debated taking the seat directly next to him when I entered the bar, but I concluded it would be too obvious.

Karro did not know me.

But I knew him.

Karro was smart. He would know.

I sucked in a breath. I felt the mask made of deceit and The Blood fall down my face. I had practiced how to smile in the mirror hours before this. Weeks even. For months, I'd been studying his file. What he liked; what girls made him hard; how those girls smiled.

I turned to him and showed him what he wanted to see.

He was gorgeous. I couldn't deny that. His hair was a dark brown, contrasting with the golden hue of tan. I could see tattoos across his arm, and I knew of the ones he hid beneath his clothes. I knew everything about him.

He was six foot something, with muscles littered around his thighs, abs, and arms. He'd been larger earlier in life. I'd seen it on his case file.

I wondered if fleeing from The Blood was causing unwanted stress. Was that the reason for his weight loss?

It should be.

No one leaves us.

"I don't know," I purred, looking down at the green of my drink. "I just can't handle the rough stuff."

Even if I was living a carefully created lie, this may have been the worst one to leave my mouth. I needed roughness; it was me.

I stirred it with my straw, allowing my cheeks to rise. I focused on something that made me angry, like General 32 slapping the top of my wrist like I was some dog. My cheeks heated, though to Karro I appeared flustered.

But, it was all a lie.

Everything about me had become a lie. I was deceit, incarnate. Born with a sole mission. Him. If I were not here for The Blood, I'd prove him wrong and down an entire bottle of bourbon.

Nonetheless, I looked back up to him and took a small sip of the margarita. Pride could not exist in someone like me. I would never make it through this mission.

I looked at his left eye, then his lips, and then the last eye. I sucked in my bottom lip when I met the scar on his bottom lip.

"Hm." Karro grunted and downed the rest of his whiskey.

I looked at my thighs, shifting them together. I wore a tight black shirt paired with a black and red pleated skirt. Fishnets were paired with it all. Karro had noticed them immediately. In fact, when I took my seat at the bar earlier, it was the first thing he had noticed.