Page 11 of Lost Kingdom

“I’m not sleeping in here with you!” She shouts so fucking loud, I bet her beloved boss and best friend’s ears prick up in the next room. “If you think this is how you force a relationship after I’ve told you no?—”

“I might have his name…” I snag her hand and jerk her to a stop, pulling her in and inhaling her breath when we collide. Then I stare into her eyes, blue like the ocean, and mean like we’ve been enemies our whole lives. “But I’m not like him. So cut the shit.”

“I’m allowed to not be okay with this arrangement!” Her heart pounds, visible in the pulse in her throat, and physical as her wrist thuds against my palm. “I don’twantto stay in a room with you, Tim. I want privacy. I want tonotshare a bed, and I especially don’t want to share a bed with the man who refuses to respect my opinion onanything.”

“It’s not about respecting your opinion.” I drag her closer, so her head tilts back and her eyes turn glassy with need. With desire. “It’s about knowing better than you do.”

“Pompous asshole.”

I flash a wide, feral grin. But I don’t feel any of the pleasure it implies. “You wanted me, and I said no because it wasn’t safe for you.”

“Then Ididn’twant you,” she spits right back, “and now suddenly you’ve decided you’re in. I changed my mind. And if I knew what the hair clip represented, I wouldn’t have accepted it.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have worn it today. You haven’t changedyour mind, Aubree Grace. You’re just proud.” I bring her closer, because fuck it, I want so badly to have her on my lips. But I’m not like the Tim who came before me, so instead of pressing a kiss to her mouth, I lay one on her cheek. Softly. Gently. And so fucking drawn out, she relaxes in my hands and accepts what we both know is true.

“You’re mad at me,” I whisper, “because we have a lifetime of yes-no-in-out-bruised feelings and over-inflated pride hurting us.” Pulling back, just an inch or two until I can look into her eyes, I smile and breathe a little easier when her gaze drops. “You still want me, Aubree. You just wanna be an insufferable brat about it first.” I release her wrist and feel bad when she stumbles back, her stubborn streak making her stance too rigid, then I tap her hip and reach up to loosen the tie that threatens to choke me. “You’re sleeping in this room tonight. Inthatbed,” I glance over her shoulder. “And I’ll sleep on the floor. No funny business. No bullshit. I’ll close my eyes while you change, and I won’t remind you that you still fucking want me.”

“I do not!”

“You blush when I look into your eyes. You look for me in every single room you’re in.”

A low, kitten growl rolls along the back of her throat. “I can’t help my physiological response to your presence.”

“Trust me,” I wrench the tie free, “I feel that same way about you. The fact you’ve been drinking tonight means I’m taking my ass to bed right now. And so are you. It’s late, physiology fucks over the best of people, and three a.m. is when the devil is out messing with perfectly functional relationships. You looked really beautiful today, by the way. I don’t know if I told you yet.”

She turns from me, grumbling something unpleasant under her breath, then she tugs her bag closer, tearing the zipper down and snatching swaths of fabric from its mysterious depths. “No. You didn’t tell me. In fact, your lack of telling me has contributed to my bad mood.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in anything to do with me?” I undo the buttons on my shirt and slowly begin undressing. My body hurts from being awake so fucking long. On a plane hours before the sun came up this morning—yesterday morning, to be precise—flying six more across the country to attend my brother’s wedding, and getting a late start because my cop brother, his medical examiner wife, and Aubree—Aubree fucking Emeri,the most beautiful pain in my ass I’ve ever known—were busy with dead people until close to midnight.

I wasn’t leaving Copeland without Aubree, and she wasn’t leaving without Mayet.

So now we’re all sleep deprived and flirt with insanity.

“Of course you’re allowed to compliment me after I have my hair and makeup professionally applied. It’s a flattering remark, not a whole marriage proposal.” Muttering, she bends and steps into a pair of pyjama shorts with little monkeys and bright yellow bananas decorating the material. She keeps the dress on to cover her body and retain her modesty, pulling the shorts up and bouncing to set the elastic band in place on her hips. Then she goes back for the matching top.

I’m bananas about sleep.

“A woman likes to be told she’s pretty when she is, in fact, professionally made up.”

“You’re prettier when you’re the regular you.”

She freezes, clutching her tank and glaring over her shoulder like she thinks her heated stare will burn me.

“That’s not to say you weren’t stunning today,” I explain. “Or that seeing you didn’t take my breath away. But a regular day in Copeland, when you wear those stupid flare jeans you do, and the four-inch platformkick his assboots, the way you style your hair sometimes, and the earrings you like with the dangling rainbows…” I shrug and open my shirt when she peels her eyes frontward again. She slips the tank down over the gown and stabs her arms through the spaghetti straps. Then she contorts her body and reaches back to release the zipper, hidden beneath the monkey pjs, so when she releases herself from the dress’s confines, she literally exhales and slumps.

Fuck knows how tight she’s been wrapped up all day.

“Seeing the regular, medical examiner, smells-a-bit-like-decay you is how I like you most.”

She drags her gown down, inadvertently showing off the small of her back and a sneaky tattoo—almost a tramp stamp, but a little off to the side—she maneuvers the gown and steps out of the excessive fabric. “No one likes the smell of decay. The fact you say you do is ridiculous and offensive.”

“Offensive?” My heart swells when she turns, and though I’m sure she meant for her eyes to come to mine, they drop instead to my torso. To the swaths of ink I started needling into my body long before I sat in a real tattoo parlor. What started as pen ink and a needle—don’t do that. It’s bad for you—ended with hundreds of hours with my artist, countless dollars, and enough line work on my torso to keep Aubree busy for a whole night.

If only she would allow herself the freedom to look.

“Why is my statement about how I like you offensive?”

She tilts her head, reading the script that lines my biceps—Omertà—and attempts to translate things she doesn’t know.

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