“I want to ask her what her role in this is. Of course, I don’t know if she will help us if we find her. Is she even alive?”
I don’t know what to say to him.
Quiet stretches between us. The light at the open window has gone amber, and outside, a gardener pushes a wheelbarrow across gravel. The sound is brief and ordinary and very far away.
“Monroe radioed an hour ago,” Lucas says eventually. His thumb is still moving on my wrist. “The squadron has discovered a compound.”
“What did they see?”
“Nothing he wanted to say on a radio.”
“Come on.” I tug him to his feet. “Everyone is tired. We’ll have dinner sent to their rooms. We can also have ours in our suite. I just want to rest.”
He lets me pull him along.
He is in the shower when one of the staff brings in dinner. Sitting in his pajamas, shirtless, his hair still wet, Lucas eats. I can see the strain in his eyes. My mate bears all the weight of the world on his shoulders. I don’t like it.
“I’m going to change,” I tell him once the dishes are removed.
He makes a noncommittal noise, focused on the report on his tablet. My mate is also a workaholic. Another little thing I want to change. Work does not belong in the bedroom.
Actually, I need him distracted right now. I retrieve my lingerie before I lose my nerve.
I quickly open the dresser drawer and push aside the clothes in front to decide what I’m looking for. The black is too much. The cream is too soft. The wine-colored seems milder. I slip it out of the drawer.
The bathroom is the only place I can do this; the full-length mirror in the bedroom would intimidate me before I tied the first bow. My fingers fumble at the satin. It sits cool against my ribs, warmer at my hips where the ties cross. When I straighten, the woman in the glass looks back at me wide eyed, half stunned, out of her depth.
What is the worst he will do, I ask her silently, ignore you?
Being ignored by Lucas is something I have already survived. I can survive it again. But this time, I might kick him in the family jewels.
I open the bathroom door before I chicken out. Lucas is standing at the corner of the bed in his pajamas, frowning down at something on the tablet. The lamp on the side table catches the silver at his temples.
He looks up and freezes.
“Sienna.” His voice goes rough at the edges. “What are you wearing?”
I step out of the bathroom into the warm light of the bedroom. The satin moves smoothly against my upper thighs. My chin lifts. Slowly, deliberately, I do a turn for him in the middle of the floor.
Facing him again, I tilt my head. “What do you think?”
There is a long stretch where Lucas Steele, Alpha of Silvercrest Pack, does not appear capable of speech.
The tablet is still in his hands. His lips have parted. His eyes move from the bow at my hip to the strap on my shoulder to my mouth and back down the other side, and they are doing it in a loop he does not seem to be controlling.
“You look…very pretty,” he rasps.
My wolf yowls inside me.
Pretty.
My eyes drop, deliberately, to the very obvious tent at the front of his pajama pants. I let my gaze sit there for a moment before lifting it back to his face.
“‘Pretty’ is doing a lot for you, Alpha Steele.”
His throat moves.
A step toward him takes me onto the carpet. The pile is soft under my bare feet. “You get this worked up for ‘pretty’?” Another step. “You must be very easy.”
