Page 82 of Underground Prince

“You’re not working this afternoon.”

I assumed Theo was making such an astute observation as a greeting. I fitted the towel tighter around my chest.

“And you’re not working this morning,” I said. “Who needs tracking devices these days when we have such smarts?”

Theo remained outside, hands in his pants pockets, his open suit jacket draped behind his forearms. His navy tie knot was just shy of askew, probably from loosening and tightening it all morning, and I wanted to reach up and straighten it, to have my knuckles brush against his neck.

I was conscious of a mere towel separating me from this man. He still hadn’t made any moves to come in even though I’d given him an entire doorway to step through. “What can I do for you?”

His lips quirked, maybe in response to what a damp, heavily breathing girl naked but for a square of cotton could do for him.

“I have to stop greeting you like this.” I fidgeted with the towel. “What was it last time, my underwear?”

His eyes traveled down the length of my body, lingering on my exposed legs. I clenched between my thighs, feeling hot.

“I believe I prefer this version of you,” he said once his study concluded and he met my eyes, a calm tempest against my frantic blinks. “Off guard and disheveled.” His tongue wrapped around and explored his last word, “Exposed.”

“For once,” I said, the words creaking through my throat, “I would like to see you be those things.”

Another quirk.

“Come in already,” I said. “I’m freezing.”

He obeyed, and I turned for the bathroom, but I felt him—I would always sense him when he was near, a warm current shimmering between my body and his, no matter how much distance was between us in a single room.

I used the bathroom door as a weak barrier between his heat and mine, leaving it open enough to talk through as I stepped into jeans and an oversized cream sweater.

“So what are you doing here?” I tried asking him again. I threw my hair up, twisting a hair tie around it a few times.

“Are you sick?”

“No.” A few taps of translucent powder on my forehead and one or two swipes of mascara and I declared myself ready.

“Stressed?” he asked.

Sighing, I pushed back from the mirror. “Always,” I said as I entered the main room. “But it’s—”

He caught me as I was passing him to get…I don’t know what.

All Theo did was rest a hand on my shoulder. Everything tilted and I was spinning around to him with nothing but a mere gesture.

His hand moved to the nape of my neck, his thumb caressing a tender spot behind my ear. His scent—smoky, spicy—triggered a spike in temperature, my shortened breaths giving me away.

“What happened?” he murmured.

Everything I had that made me human was focused on the spot where he was touching me. “N-nothing.”

“Liar.” His thumb moved to my cheek, grazing, his friction stoking fire. “Tell me.”

“I, um.” I had to maintain logic around this man. “I needed a break. These long nights, my job during the day, it’s something I have to get used to.”

Liar liar liar.

“So I’m taking a Sunday off,” I finished.

He didn’t reply, reverting to his preferred silence, but thick with appraisal. “You’re not telling me something.”

“You say that like you know me.”

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