Page 45 of House of Lies

But can I honestly let a spanking impede my investigation?

Bruises heal.

My dignity… well, it’ll just have to take one for the team.

Taking up the whisk, I start stirring the sauce again. It’s finally thickening. All the other ingredients are ready, waiting for me to assemble them into my mother’s famous pie.

I need to figure out how to access his computer. There’s got to be something on there I can take back to Detective Lewis to prove that Remington is?—

“That smells delicious,” Ethan rumbles in my ear.

I gasp in fright as I whirl around, whisk in hand, ready to defend myself. He yanks the utensil from my fingers and studies it for a moment before licking it.

It’s possibly the most panty-melting thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. He’s so serious, so grim, a stark contrast to how his tongue twines through the whisk with practiced ease. I can only imagine how it would feel if he buried his head between my legs and ate me out like that.

I snatch the whisk and turn my back on him, hiding my furious blush.

“Stalking me again?” I snap.

“The smell was driving me mad,” he says. “Is it ready yet?”

“I’m still busy with the sauce. Then it has to bake. So no.” I don’t turn back to him. I’m too scared to. I don’t trust myself right now… and I still don’t trust Ethan.

He makes an unhappy sound in the back of his throat, and I roll my eyes. “If you have time to come and lurk, then you might as well be useful and make a salad.”

Still with my back turned.

I expect him to leave, or to make a comment about my attitude—he seems to have a genuine issue with it—but he just huffs out a breath and goes over to the fridge to take out salad ingredients. He works in silence as I finish the béchamel sauce and spares me only a single glance as I bring the sauce over to the kitchen island to assemble the lasagna.

“I don’t eat olives,” I say when I see him crack open a jar.

“I do.”

“So add them to your plate when you’ve dished up.”

“Just fish them out of your salad.”

“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose when he sends me a long-suffering stare. “Then I get that gross olive sauce all over my lettuce.”

“You’re very picky for someone who…”

I frown when he trails off. “For someone who what?” I cock my eyebrow. “Who doesn’t own a McMansion?”

“I didn’t mean?—”

“Oh, like hell you didn’t,” I mutter, slapping a spoon of béchamel into the casserole dish.

“Do you have something to say, Cassidy?” Ethan stops cubing a ring of feta, hand fisted with the point of his chef’s knife pointing at the ceiling.

I glance at the knife, then up at him. You’d swear I have a death wish, the way I’m challenging him the whole time. After last night, I know this man is capable of violence. Do I really want to make him angry enough to use that knife on me?

“No,” I relent, if grudgingly.

He finishes making the salad while I’m layering the lasagna. All in silence. Then I pop the casserole dish into the preheated oven and set the timer for forty minutes.

As I stare through the oven door to the magnificent creation inside, my necklace slips out of the top of my uniform. The heavy pendant swings on its gold chain, but I’m too busy fantasizing about the pie in the oven to care.

“I saw you’ve finished up with the first floor.”

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