Page 6 of King of Hollywood

I squinted at him, but did as I was told, pulling the shade into place. For a moment we were fully enveloped in darkness. When Felix reached for the light switch and flipped it on, the long cluttered hallway was illuminated.

Ah. So that’s where the dust was coming from.

Everything.

I itched to march across the street, grab my bucket of cleaning supplies, and return to fix the issue. Though I knew that I may end up doing just that—depending on the state of the murder scene. So I bit back the urge for now.

The carpet was worn and old. The pattern dated and out of fashion, as was everything else. Portraits lined the hallway, depicting scenery from all over the world—some of which reminded me of movies I’d watched with my mother as a child.

Hundreds of letters were framed and mounted in glass. They took up the entire back wall beside the long, winding staircase that led upward, ending in shadow. There was an antique air to everything, though luckily—for both me and my nose—the scent that usually accompanied old houses and old people was missing—apart from the dust.

I’d always had to pinch my nose when visiting my grandmother’s home. Only when she wasn’t looking, of course. My mother had gotten quite offended the first time she’d caught me doing it—and I hadn’t repeated that mistake ever again.

I hated disappointing her.

Even though Grandma smelled like mothballs, Mentos, and dried-up flowers. And it almost physically pained me not to say something about it. I still managed to keep my mouth shut.

It only took me a moment to take everything in, before my focus moved back to Felix. Back to his nearly red eyes, and the dark circles beneath them. Back to his broad shoulders, and the way the silk of his navy pajamas hugged the curve of muscle.

He had a movie star’s body.

One that was far too pretty to belong to a man who hid himself away.

He should be flaunting it, not…whatever it was he was doing.

The only reason I didn’t show off my own physique was because I maintained my body not for aesthetics—though that helped—but because muscle was kind of a requirement when one’s hobby produced corpses.

“Thank you for your help,” Felix said, voice shaky and soft, slow—like he was still half-asleep. He sounded almost drunk. My hackles rose.

“You haven’t been drinking have you?” I asked, disapprovingly.

“No, why?” Felix frowned up at me, an adorable little wrinkle between his dark brows.

“You’re acting odd.”

“Oh,” Felix laughed, his shoulders relaxing as the tension bled away. “It always takes me a while to get my brain to fully wake.”

“I see.”

That made him vulnerable.

His guard was down. He was breathing evenly. His eyes were warm, if not a little nervous. There was tension in his frame but it was a normal amount of tension. Equivalent to what I would feel if I had let a stranger into my home for the first time.

Could he not sense that I was a predator?

Maybe not.

Most prey did not greet their hunters at the door.

Not that I was hunting Felix at the moment—believe me, I wasn’t. If I was, he would not be looking at me like that. Whatever the hell that face meant. If he was Bambi then I was the hunter with a gun. He should not be staring at me like he wanted me to run him over—with his guard down entirely.

Felix clearly had no self-preservation skills. He was very lucky I’d decided to take him under my metaphorical wing—and that I protected men like him, rather than eating them.

Though perhaps he’d like that?

He certainly looked like he wanted to be eaten.

Maybe he was lying, and he really was drunk. I had no other explanation for the blatant hunger in his eyes, or the way his gaze kept dropping to my throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed, his pink tongue flickering out to wet his lower, very chapped lip.