Page 84 of Tide of Treason
Lucius eyed the Zippo, jaw set, expression thoughtful. “Learned to light a smoke before I could walk.”
“And where did you learn to kiss like that?”
Click-click.
Darkness again.
He tossed the lighter onto the side table, then settledback on his elbows, the bedsheets sliding low on his hips. A rough thumb nudged my chin, tipping my head back until I met his eyes in the moonlight. He had such a beautiful face it was almost too much to look at.
“Trial and error,” Lucius said at last, but his gaze cut to my mouth.
“Bullshit.”
“Fine.” He drew a breath, exhaled, then dragged his thumb against my bottom lip with something dark and considering in his gaze. “The Cartel taught me.”
A wrinkle formed on my forehead. I tried to speak, but he slipped his thumb into my mouth, and I shut up immediately, sucking the taste of him past my teeth.
“Know what my first interrogation involved?”
I bit the pad of his thumb, but it hardly seemed to register, so I nudged him away, frustrated. Lucius withdrew. I murmured, “Torture.”
“No.”
“Killing?”
He flicked my nose. “No. Had to kiss a man.”
Okay, that’d do it.
I chewed that over, rolling onto my back. “Had to, or wanted to?”
“Think of it as a test,” he said. “The question was whether I could seduce myself out of a one-way ticket to an unmarked grave.”
“And?”
A faint smile. “I didn’t die.”
Five minutes later, I was still digesting that little tidbit of information. In fact, it left me so utterly perplexed that a full thirty seconds passed where I didn’t say a word. When it dragged on too long, Lucius shifted toward me, paused, and wore an expression that was almost . . . hurt. That look vanished as quickly as it came, tucked beneath the armor of ambivalence
He broke the silence, voice gone rough. “You tell me something. That back tattoo of yours.”
My spine prickled. I rolled onto my stomach, letting the sheets slip low on my hips, baring the tattoo he was suddenly so fixated on. It was old habit to hide it—hair swept down my back, dresses cut high, silk blouses snapped tight at the nape.
Lucius traced a finger over the first black sweep. Persephone rising from the underworld, half-devoured by darkness, flowers blooming along her spine, curling into the curves of my waist. His thumb slid lower, brushing the start of a vine that licked over the top of my ass. Some of the petals dipped right beneath the strip of my thong, inked onto skin that only ever saw the light when I was reckless.
“You ever gonna tell me what happened the year you got this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you were thirteen, Lucius.” And that was the answer.
He worked out the math in his head. “So you were nineteen.”
“Smart boy,” I drawled.
The way his jaw tensed told me he hated being patronised, but he hated not knowing more. A low, simmering growl. “You can’t drop that and expect me to roll over and snore, Kayla.”
