Colors flash behind my eyelids. It’s his voice, deadpanned sex, so blunt and in control that sparks break beneath my skin. It’s the fact that he didn’t just come out and call me a good girl, but waved it over my head like a carrot.Be a good girl.I have to work for it.
When the edge slips out from beneath my feet, and I’m falling,and my mouth is opening with the first shaky breaths of a moan that’s so going to get us caught, Faust slides his hand over my lips. Clamping me down. I come like that, muffled and trembling, my whole ridiculous world reduced to just him and me and his fingers and his thigh.
“Good, baby. Such a good girl when you let me take care of you,” he whispers, each hot word drawing out another wave of pleasure. “You take it so well. I knew you would. Knew you’d be such a perfect thing, fucking my thigh, making me so hard—”
There’s a knock on the door. Faust’s words catch in his throat.
“Hey, hey, it’s me!” Thankfully, Mei’s voice doesn’t cut right through the door. The wood is at least a couple inches thick. “Thirty-second warning! We need you outside.”
Faust looks at me, his face blank. I blink at him, no idea what I look like. Disheveled? Sweaty? Not unlike a woman who just came without any hands involved? Silently, Faust reels up onto his feet, presumably through sheer abdominal strength. “Coming,” he replies—sounding pretty normal. He’s flushed, and his racing suit is doing very little to mask the noticeable effect I’ve had on him. But other than that?
I pantomime snapping to get his attention, then silently mouth,Where should I go?
He glances around. No door on the closet. No other exit out of the room. He frowns, looking pained.Under the bed?
Seriously?
His frown drops to a scowl, and he gestures around us, like he’s pointing out how there’s literally no other option.
Exaggerating my own silent huff, I slither off the bed and start to squirrel myself away. Only before I can, Faust takes my wrist. I turn, startled—and then his mouth is on mine, hard and warmand apparently not caring if he shocks a gasp out of me. I manage to stay quiet, though, slipping my fingers up to loosely cup his face. His stubble is scratchy. He already has one foot out the door, metaphorically. This was such a ridiculously risky decision we both just made, and I’m going to beat myself up about it for weeks. Months? Oh, why not—years!
Then he pulls back, looks at me, and kisses me one more time. And my chest, which had been rattling with my own pounding heartbeat not ten seconds ago, goes momentarily and completely quiet.
Sorry, he mouths afterward.
Not your fault.Then, in a stroke of genius, I grab the watch I was supposed to help him with and clap the proverbial handcuff onto his wrist.Luck.
“Ten seconds!”
Faust’s eyes are on me, his mouth curling with the faintest hint of a smile. He looks okay. Handsome, heartbreakingly handsome, and not… aroused. No one would know what just happened. Except for us.
Smiling back, I roll my eyes, walk to the bed, and drop below it. I’m there, squeezed into the shadows, when the door opens with a metallic swish. “Sorry, sorry, I know, this sucks,” Mei says, completely unaware. “It’ll be over before you know it. Just give a few responses and then you can come back and chill.”
“It’s not so bad,” Faust says.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Christine deserved it. And I won something today, too.”
“Really?” Mei shoots back, skeptical.
I’m holding my breath, my blood rushing in my ears. What did he win? What’s he going to say? He knows I’m listening. There’s nothing else for me to do but to listen.
But there’s only another swish, then a thump. The door’s shut. In the hallway, muffled voices. A woman laughing. They’re gone.
With my heart still beating out of my chest, I look up at the bottom of the bed. IKEA slats. The basic, blond ones. That’s funny. That’s…
Shit.
With zero grace and even less tact, I roll out from under the bed and bolt to the full-length mirror hanging off the wall. This is it. My destruction. So long overdue. But the woman standing there in a Stark-Benzin shirt and Faust’s jacket, her long blonde hair mussed, her face a bright pink, isn’t wearing red lipstick today.
So, Faust isn’t, either.
And I’m okay.
But I think—I think I wish I wasn’t.
Chapter 25TRIANGULATION
