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“What?”
As I sit up in protest, he takes the chance to slide the shirt over my head, tosses it in the corner of the room, and comes down on his side. “Shh,” he murmurs, tracing the dip where my waist meets my hip. “Lie down and relax.”
I’m not quiet because I’m compliant, but because I’m suddenly too stunned to speak. Slowly, he releases his grip on my wrists and slides his shoulder under my head, so I’m lying in the crook of his arm.
My body is cloaked in his warm shadow; bathed in the intensity of his stare. He watches my breasts rise and fall for a few moments before grazing a knuckle between them.
A shudder rocks my core, my nipples tightening in anticipation. “Look at you,” he rasps. “You’re so perfect, Queenie.” We both watch his hand as it glides over the curve of my stomach. “Every single inch of you. Perfection.”
“I—”
My objection melts into a moan when his hot mouth latches onto my breast. He sucks slowly, gently, giving me so little of his tongue that all my muscles clench for more of it. Eyes lifting to mine, he grazes his bottom lip up my breasts to my collarbone, where he gives the pendant of my necklace a small kiss. “No talking. Just relax and let me worship you.” His eyes flick to mine again, a heated desperation behind them. “Please.”
I’m rigid, confusion and confliction freezing my bones. This is toonice.It doesn’t sit right with words liketemporaryandfor now.But then he peels my panties down my thighs, and I watch as his hand disappears between them.
And with every butterfly wing brush against my clit, I start to thaw.
Rafe studies me with an intensity that makes me feel more than naked. He watches his hand play with my pussy; watches my expression when he slides his index finger inside me and presses against my sweet spot.
“Good girl,” he whispers against my mouth when I moan. “Let me hear it again.”
My blood sizzles like cold water on a hot skillet. My nerves thrum in places I didn’t know existed. I’m consumed by ink and cashmere, and, with every satin word spoken against my clammy skin, it gets harder and harder to breathe.
“Come for me, beautiful girl,” he murmurs, working my clit to a low, slow rhythm.
As his head dips to kiss my pendant again, an explosion erupts in my core, spreading outward, down to my toes and up to my fingertips.
My orgasm is violent to his calm. Desperate to his composed. He holds my head to his chest as I ride it. His heartbeat against my cheek is the first thing I hear when my senses come back to me. It’s strong and steady, reliable like the ever-present tick of a clock.
He lowers me gently to the pillow. Follows his thumb as he swipes it over my wet bottom lip.
“My Queen of Hearts,” he rasps in fascination, more to himself than to me. “My beautiful demise.”
Time seems to slow, like it doesn’t want to rush to the end either. I feel broken. I guess all that ice was holding me together. We lie like this for what feels like hours, my ragged breathing mingling with the roar of the storm.
And then another sound, this one imagined, scratches down my spine. The scrape of metal; the clanging of a lock. Thesnapof a trap around my ankle.
Panic grips me instantly. My hand shoots out to grab Rafe’s bicep.
“What game are we playing now?” I breathe.
His gaze is everything I don’t want it to be.
“The game of make-believe, Queenie.”
Theskyisthesame ashtray gray as the snow on the ground. It meets somewhere in the middle and creates the illusion the horizon rolls on forever. The sprawling hotel in front of it is only a few shades lighter.
Angelo lights up a cigarette. “You’ve watchedThe Shining,right?”
“Unfortunately.”
Fucking Gabe. I was feeling equal parts generous, preoccupied, and out-of-luck when I handed him the right to choose the set-up for this month’s Sinners Anonymous game. This was way back when I was as oblivious as Angelo, believing our brother was crawling the walls with the mundane task of eliminating Dante’s men with slashed tires and laced cigarettes, not torturing them with makeshift weapons in a cave.
We drove for hours, way past Devil’s Cove, up to where Canada’s terrain and cold weather seep out from its border.
“He only killed a cat,” Angelo grunts.
Begrudgingly, I’m thinking the same thing. Why the fuck am I standing half a mile from British Colombia, in front of an abandoned hotel, for a cat killer?
