“Pfftt.” She pushed away from me, her brow wrinkling in disbelief. “I moved on from him more than a hundred years ago.”

“I believe it, but did he? Narcissists have this need to be forefront in their victims’ minds. You’ve obviously danced to get lifeforce before. Why, this time, did he get upset? He admitted he is always looking for a meal at the club. You said you haven’t bonded before, but have you been married or officially tied in some other way to any of your previous partners?”

She looked thoughtfully over my shoulder. Still unable to keep my hands off my bride, I lightly traced meaningless patterns up and down the sides of her thighs as she thought.

“You aren’t the first arrangement I’ve had where I’ve healed someone for lifeforce. It’s the longest, to be sure, but we never… Not that Attwater would know.”

“Oh, he’d know,” I confirmed.

Palmer raised a brow.

“I can’t seem to keep my hands off you, baby.” I squeezed the globes of her ass, making her rock forward on my lap. “I’d think anyone you were with longer than three days would know you love being touched, and they wouldn't be able to resist the excuse to have their hands all over you.”

Palmer tapped my nose with her index finger like I was a cat. “You say the most delicious things,” she sighed. “We are going back into the council chambers at any moment, and I don’t need to go in obviously aroused.”

I smirked. “It would prove my theory, though. If he thinks we are doing the ‘everything and more’ outlined in your sexual contract, then… It was filed with the council, and considering I answered truthfully that sex could be on the table––”

“I know.” She gently traced the shell of my ear.

Heat flooded my spine, traveling south. “We could, and you said it would be obvious?”

“Most of us can smell bodily fluids,” she explained, her finger tracing my jaw. “You have a point. Attwater feeds only from women, and he never expects his feeding partners to get off. If we came in there with you smelling like your release, a man’s natural ending of a feeding session, he’d expect that. But if we went in and I was the one so obviously sated, he might––”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, kissing her, open-mouthed and hungry.

I loved the little noises she made when I twirled her nipples or bit down on the swollen peaks; her cries of pleasure made me rock hard. Eating her out wasn’t a chore, and neither was filling her with my fingers. I had become very intimate with that gloriously slick channel of hers, and it made me think of how amazing she would feel riding my dick, squeezing and clamping around me as I filled her full of my come. I was ready and willing to wait until she was, but that didn't mean I couldn’t get her off and enjoy having her juices very purposefully left all over my mouth and chin.

Which I did, twice before we decided we were pushing our luck. We’d already been in there an hour; the council enforcer could return at any time.

I’d go to all the appointments if we could do this while we waited.

She had just finished fixing those long gold chains I’d decided were going to be the only thing she wore in my next sketch of her when a booming knock sounded from across the room.

“Ready baby?” I asked, feeling settled with our plan.

“Ready,” she replied.

We crossed the room as the door opened and went out to meet Tristan in the hall. The widening of his eyes was confirmation enough; Tristan knew what we had been doing in there.

We walked slowly back to the council chambers, giving Attwater plenty of time to be seated and waiting when we entered. I should have been more nervous, but I had a feeling that the only person I had to worry about would be Attwater, and he had something more powerful to worry about––my Boo Hag bride, backed up by the two enforcers and other council members. Even if they thought he only deserved a slap on the wrist, they still wouldn’t let him maim either of us.

Tristan entered first, and I held the door for Palmer to enter next. I took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

I walked in, a self-satisfied smirk on my face. I could tell when it hit the supernaturals. Councilman Soros grinned at me with an almost manic glee, as if he knew what we were planning. Not even two clicks of the second hand on the clock passed before I heard a chair scrape off to my side.

“You whore,” Attwater seethed, rushing forward with his hands raised.

Palmer caught his hands in hers. An unearthly calm settled over her features as she pushed back. “What I do with my time and my husband is my business.”

“You’ve always been mine,” he growled, his hands blurring before Soros tackled him to the side. Palmer hit the ground with Attwater but rolled away at the last second.

Attwater bucked under Councilman Soros, Attwater’s glamour shifting from a polished blond-haired man to a dull-brown, bloodied skeleton, and I ran in what felt like slow-motion to Palmer’s side.

“No one has the right to touch her. She’s mine, and now he will see. He won’t want her—no one could want something so hideous!” Attwater roared before he disappeared with Councilman Soros in a puff of campfire-smelling smoke.

“Everyone turn around right now!” Councilwoman Oxendine yelled. The enforcers stopped short of Palmer and me and immediately spun around.

“It’s alright, Sable,” Palmer said, brushing back her luminous fall of silver hair, which had been obscuring her face.