Page 133 of House of Lilith

I hear a ping sound from my phone, but I just keep looking at my cousin.

She frowns a little, but then she lets out this awkward little laugh and says, “Men don’t really pay any attention to me.”

Now that annoys me. “What about that O’Malley guy? You mean to say Ididn’tsee him chatting you up at the party before the Third Game?”

“You noticed?” she asks, a frown creasing her forehead again. Then she shakes her head. “No, he was only being polite. You’re reading into it.”

“Fine, maybe,” I reply. “But maybe you’re not reading into itenough. Right now, I could start listing guys I’ve seen ogling you and never stop. But you never seem to notice.”

She lets out a little laugh. “Watch it, Nyx, I might start thinking you care.”

“It’s annoying, Hilde,” I insist, “the way you demean yourself for no reason whatsoever. There are plenty of men out there who’d kill to get under those pants.”

Now that seems to render her speechless. She doesn’t say anything, she just frowns at me.

Not waiting for her to say anything, I let out a scoff and I whip my phone out to see what that ping was about.

“I want those legs on my shoulders,” the text says.

Sender? Howe.

I press my lips tight, my heart starting to race. “Good to see you, too,” I type, sensing Hilde going back to her book.

“You know what would make it even better?”

I roll my eyes, but I also smile. “I’ll take a wild guess,” I reply. “My legs on your shoulders?”

“Bingo. Such a clever girl you are. I want you in F12 in ten.”

And my eyes keep darting to that ‘want you’, my skin flushing.

But I hesitate. And not because it’s something we don’t do. Ever since my birthday, that is, which is basically the day the rule about spontaneous meetups went out the window. Since then, we’ve mostly managed to stick to abandoned classrooms, but we’ve been meeting up to fuck at barely more than a moment’s notice. On the lake shore at one of his parties. In a broom closet after a mandatory fire drill. In a bathroom while the others were eating lunch, thinking we’d gone to get them all more sodas from the kitchens.

And the sex is… Every time we meet, it gets a little more impossible for me to stop him from trying to get a second round. Sometimes, it plain doesn’t work at all. I get so lost in it all that I find his head between my legs long after he’d finished. And then I get self-conscious again and it’s over, but until that moment…

Still, now that it’s been two whole weeks since we last did it… There’s this reluctance in me to start it back up again.

“So?” he asks.

“I’m busy now,” I finally reply.

“Time and place then, please and thank you.”

Frowning, I drop my phone to the ground and lower myself back into a lying position. I haven’t let myself repeat the mistake from my birthday, obsessing about whether he has anyone else at the moment. I’ve told myself it’s not something I should even be thinking about and, well, I haven’t been.

But I’ve never really stopped noticing it, how little he reveals of himself.

And how infuriatingly confusing he can be. I mean, he makes it seem as if he wants to knowevery little thingabout me, mind-numbingly boring stuff I never tell anyone because, well, who’d give a shit?

And I fucking tell him, even the things I wouldn’t tell anyone else. I mean, there’s so much private shit he knows about me, my family, my hopes and dreams...

But wheneverIaskhimsomething, it’s all vague answers or deflective jokes or attempts at getting me riled up.

So, of course, his answer to where he was going was… “Wouldn’tyoulike to know?” followed by a bite to my neck.

It makes me blow out a frustrated breath, just thinking about it.

But I got my answer from Ricky, at least half of it, when once, in passing, he said to some Grimm that ‘Boss’ had to go home for a bit.

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