Page 92 of Dishonored

Funny how that worked.

Warm sunlight woke Aria first, and then the buzzing of her phone second. She stiffened all over as the hard body pressed against hers shifted, but relaxed when his voice filtered through her sleep-dazed senses.

“You should tell Nico you’re alive,” Caesar muttered, tone thick with sleep. “Otherwise, he’s going to wake me up again, and then I’ll have to kill him.”

Aria would have laughed.

Except he sounded serious.

Even as Aria rolled over on the bed to put more distance between them, Caesar’s hand still grazed her spine. His fingertips making a soft path from her lower back all the way up to her shoulders. Her skin prickled with heat and need while her mind flashed back to the night before.

The phone buzzed again.

“Goddammit, Nico.”

Finally, Aria snatched the phone off the bed stand, and checked the messages. No missed calls or texts from Raffe—not surprising as he rarely rolled his ass out of bed before nine, and it was only six. Nico, on the other hand, had been messaging and calling since five.

“He’s worried about you,” Caesar said.

Even through the thickness of his sleep, she could hear something there. A hint of heat in his tone that he might have been able to hide had he been properly awake.

“Nico is a friend,” Aria said.

“A good friend?”

She smiled, and glanced over her shoulder at him. Unsurprisingly, she found his stormy blue eyes looking back at her from the mountain of white blankets and pillows. A question lingered there in his gaze, but nothing more.

“A friend,” Aria repeated. “People do have those. Don’t you?”

“Not with women.”

“Right.”

She sent off a quick text to Nico, and told him not to bother her again. Putting the phone back on the nightstand, she attempted to keep some of that distance between them. At least for the moment. It was made more difficult by the slight ache between her thighs that reminded Aria it was much nicer to have Caesar very fucking close.

He was good at that.

To say the least …

“Does your husband rape you?” Caesar asked.

It came out so cold.

Not indifferent, but just … flat.

Aria answered the same way. “Often.”

“I don’t understand, then.”

She glanced over at him. “Understand what?”

“How you can be with me when someone’s hurt you like that. I get why you would want to—sex is just another weapon to use, right? Sex is the best way to manipulate or cause someone pain in a simple way. That I get. But … that’s not what this is, or last night.”

No, it wasn’t.

“It was before with you,” she said stretching a bit. “I manipulated you with sex.”

“You can’t really fake liking it the way you do with me, though, can you?”