Another grunt, this one sharper. I should walk away, give him a moment, give him space. But I wanted to know the expression on his face. I wanted to see his lips, open and panting, wet with spit.
I was almost pressed against the door, listening for another sound. Cade moaned, muffling a sharp cry of release. Then he was panting, the sound echoing in the bathroom. When I heard him straightening his clothes, closing his zipper, I stepped back, far enough away that it didn’t look like I had been listening at the doorway.
He opened the door, and the scent hit me: the warm tinge of arousal, the sharp, acidic hit of come. He offered over a tissue, and I stared at him for a moment.
“Just to be clear, you want me to rub that all over myself? That was the only solution you could come up with.” I sounded incredulous, an impossible laugh bubbling up into my voice.
Even as I tried to stifle it, something about the image hit me hard. I imagined dipping my fingers in and putting them in my mouth, tasting him. I cleared my throat, swallowing down the moisture that was accumulating in my mouth.
Shaking my head, I said, “I told you. There’s an easier way.”
I stepped close, watching as Cade went still like a rabbit in the forest who sensed a wolf nearby. He watched me with wide eyes. I reached forward, slowly enough that he would have a chance to move away if he wanted to. His eyes followed my fingers.
With one hand, I tugged his shirt collar down, pulling it so that his neck was exposed. He gasped, his chest rising and falling. Lines of tattoo swirled over the skin, fleeing when I pressed my wrist to his pulse point.
The flesh was warm and soft under my touch. I rubbed my wrist in a slow circle, then slowly raised my other hand until I was cupping his face between my palms, letting my wrists take on the scent of his neck.
He stared at me, eyes unreadable.
Slowly, I lowered my hands, trailing my fingers down his arms. The soft fabric of his shirt caught against my rough fingertips. When I reached his wrists, I gently wrapped my own hands around them.
His palms were smooth, without calluses, moisturized so there wasn’t a single bit of rough skin. His breath caught, but his eyes were somewhere on my neck.
I released his hands, reaching to the hem of my shirt to pull it off. I dropped it onto the ground, then trailed my fingers over the back of his hands again, feeling the delicate skin, the fine bones. Taking his palm, I lifted it to my neck.
For a moment, I thought about leaning over and kissing the lines of his palm, but instead, I rubbed his wrist against my neck.
He gasped, and I felt myself getting hard at the touch, the awareness of how sensitive my own wrist had been on his neck. I swallowed, and his eyes stared at my throat.
He must have been looking at Basil, and I wondered how long until he took back the snake.
Never, a traitorous voice in my mind said.Let him never take the snake back.
I stepped close, until we were breathing the same air. He lifted his face to mine, and I couldn’t help the soft smile on my lips.
“Now we smell like each other,” I said.
He jerked back, nearly stumbling over his own feet.
With brusque movements, he rolled his sleeves down, blinking at me. “We’ll have to do this every day?”
“As often as you want,” I teased him. “Some men even like to do it twice a day, but all the magazines tell me that makes me a loose woman if I let you.”
His chin jerked, and he turned from me. The stiff line of his back spoke to a deep discomfort. I tried not to imagine how long it had been since someone had touched him. Who would he have let undress him, spread him naked across the bed, worship him?
I cleared my throat, blinking. No, that wasn’t for me. This was a business arrangement, a profitable one if Keith led us to the person who wanted Cade dead. Neither Cade nor I had time to be distracted by whatever this was.
Shaking off my arousal, I said, “Keith is selling your secrets to someone else.”
He waved his hand without turning around, using his other hand to straighten his collar, the sensitive, delicate flesh disappearing under fabric.
“We’ve been over that. If he wants to sell the secrets I give him to Sonja and Petrona, even Brett, that just means I control the flow of information.”
“He was listening outside the servants’ door,” I said. “Someone had broken the wards so he could hear what was going on inside the formal dining room.”
Cade spun, and all traces of disquiet were gone. His eyes were cold, brows pulled together in a frown. “What?”
“Nia and I saw him when we were getting into position. He was listening. When I stood right where he was standing, I could hear through the door.” I crossed my arms, feeling the part of me that had been trained by eleven years working for Declan falling into place. “Jay took him to wherever Isaac would put someone when he wanted them to sweat. Keith spun a story, one he thought we would believe. House Morrison was paying him for information. When I didn’t believe that, he started throwing other names at the wall. The other houses, dryads, he probably would have named anyone you might think is against you. The only true thing he told me was that he was afraid that ‘he’ would kill him.”
