When she just nodded, Dev took what she was offering him. Then he tossed it somewhere, anywhere.
Stepping into her, he put an arm around her waist and jerked her against him. As she gasped, he focused on her mouth.
“Bullshit,” he growled.
Reaching up with his free hand, he fanned his fingers through her hair and the wind sent it on a wild, swirling ride. Then he snaked a hold up on to her nape and tilted her off-balance.
As she gripped his windbreaker, she still wasn’t meeting his eyes.
But now it was because she was too busy looking at his lips like she was hungry.
Dev dropped his head, hovering his mouth right above her own. “Tell me something,” he ordered her.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Anything.”
The pause was live-wire electric, and damn it, he knew he was being stupid with this shit. He had to live a life without complications, and he didn’t need to fuck this blond to know that she was next-level complicated.
And yet he had to ask, just like he’d had to touch her… just like he had to kiss her:
“Do you like Lebanese food?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Out in the wealthy suburbs, where the houses were monolithic and the properties were so picked and pruned their gardens had hairstyles even in winter, the daytime shutters started to rise from the windows all around Shuli’s bedroom. The subtle whirring was not loud enough to wake him up. His phone going apeshit with a call coming through did the fucking job just fine.
Jacking upright in his satin sheets, he slapped his hand to his bedside table and snapped the goddamn cell up to his ear.
“Did you find him? Tell me you found—”
The Brother Vishous’s voice was deep as the low note on a Steinway and dry as a desert. “Yeah, L.W.’s been located.”
“And he’s alive.” He kept that a statement, as if any hint of inquiry on his part would make the answer more likely to be in the negative. “Heisalive—”
“Yeah, he is.”
Shuli took a deep breath. “Thank Lassiter.”
“Wrath found him.”
“Where? What happened? When—”
“That’s not why I’m calling you—for the third time.” There was ashhtand then an exhale, and Shuli could just picture the Brotherlighting up one of his hand-rolleds. “You need to answer your fucking phone.”
Next to him, the sheets started moving, and he nearly jabbed his hand under his pillow for the knife he kept there—until he recognized the dark hair, the breast, the naked hip.
Shit, lucky for her there was a glow from the bathroom or she woulda woken up dead. And fucking hell, the tail end of the night was coming back to him now. He’d gotten shitfaced, done a couple of lines of coke at Marhalle’s, and ended up bringing home—
The woman looked at him with unfocused dark eyes. “Well, helllllo.”
Closing his eyes, he said into his phone, “Sorry. I think I passed out for a while there.”
Which explained why he didn’t get any of the texts that had no doubt been sent about L.W.
“We want you at the Audience House in an hour.”
“Okay, I’ll see you—”
The call ended, and he stared at the screen. Ah, right. There had actually been seven missed reach-out-and-touches, as well as those group texts. It was a wonder the Brotherhood hadn’t shown up here with their black daggers out and a coffin as a chaser the second the sun went bye-bye.
