Page 95 of Tide of Treason
Lucius’s eyes went impossibly darker, the kind of look that pressed hands to throats. A pang of frustration surged through me, vicious and electric, so powerful I could barely breathe. Fumbling behind me, I searched blindly for the zipper of my skirt, pulse stampeding in all the worst places.
“I don’t know if you noticed,” I bit out, irritation stitching up my words until they were a little mean, “but I didn’t sleep in my own bed once.”
“No?”
“No. I could smell you on the sheets.”
He watched me struggle with something similar to fondness. “You could’ve changed them, baby.”
“Could’ve,” I clipped. “Didn’t.”
Something dark and pleased rippled across his face. Taking the opening, I kicked off my skirt and underwear with something close to defiance while he drew the curtains shut with a remote on the side table, flicked the fireplace alive.
“Come here,” he said roughly.
In the glow of the flames, his silhouette loomedpowerful, drawing me in as I crawled up the bed. Solid beneath me, he radiated a heat that made everything else in my life feel second-rate. I pressed my lips to the corner of his mouth, breath soft. “Niccolò’s staying with me because my father insisted.” Another kiss, to the edge of his jaw. “I told him he could have the guest room.” Another, down the column of his throat. “But not my bed.”
Silence stretched so tight it hummed.
His jaw ticked—tic, tic, kaboom.
“I knew you had a past with him,” Lucius said, voice lined with teeth. “Just didn’t realise how much I’d hate having it shoved in my face. I didn’t know what I was feeling, only that it was fucking ugly.”
My pulse stalled as the fire cracked in the quiet; the sound of a heart too full.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” I whispered. “The look on your face when you saw his suitcase . . . Lucius, I didn’t know it would hit you like that.”
“I aimed for rational. But all I kept seeing was that you’d given him something you never gave me.” He skimmed a thumb over my hip, heat sinking into bone. “You keep me close enough to taste you but not enough to trust you. You let me fuck you but not protect you. You’ve made me the most intimate stranger in your life, Kayla. I’ve never had you.” A slight shake of his head. “Not really. I lease you.”
My throat closed up. I stared at the ceiling, blinking hard, refusing to let tears make a fool of me. His breath was warm on my collarbone, lips ghosting over the dip at the baseof my throat. Tucking my chin, I felt Lucius more than heard him, the sleepy suction of his mouth on my breast.
And because I was both genius and idiot, I blurted, “I wanted you to hate me,” the admission tumbling out before I could dress it up or make it safer. Because if he hated me, maybe he couldn’t leave me. Maybe I’d get to keep him longer, even if only as an adversary.
Dry as death, he said against my skin, “You picked the wrong man for that. I don’t do hate. Not with you.”
My chest caved in a little. I nuzzled his temple anyway, fingers tangled in the soft curls at his nape. My other hand steadied against his chest, feeling the rough drum of his heart. Unsteady. But only for me. Always, always, only for me. Poisonous comfort curled in my ribs, and I rocked against sinew and muscle, slicking up the divots of his abs with every pass. Each drag of friction made me lighter. Made the world fall away. Language, law, logic—none of it mattered when I was trying to crawl inside him.
He pressed his mouth to my ear, voice guttural. “You’re soaked for me. After a week of letting that piece of shit play house under your roof, you still want me.” Nipped the lobe. “Let me taste you.”
Respectability lasted about three breaths: me sprawled polite on my back, him between my thighs, the world a little bit sane for once. Fifteen seconds later I found myself on my side, thigh slung over his shoulder, the other locked around his waist. Ass cocked at an angle designed for maximum leverage and minimum dignity. If someone drew our relationship as a diagram, it’d look a hell of a lot like this—physics be damned.
Everything splintered into its basest form. Sheets. Skin. The slick bite of his teeth against my hipbone. And the humiliating, crystalline certainty that I would never, ever win a single standoff with this man. At least not when his mouth was where it was. His tongue was thorough. Lazy when he wanted me desperate, fast when he wanted me dumb, deep when he wanted to erase my name from my own head.
I did forget it, for a while.
Along with the ability to breathe.
A punishing pull on my clit sent pleasure up my spine, white-hot and wild. I was going to come. The knowledge was slow to land until it detonated into a starburst behind my eyes, the kind of climax that, centuries ago, would’ve gotten me burned at the stake for witchcraft. It left my thighs shaking, drenched his mouth, coated his chin. I think I even got him in the eyelashes.
Thankfully, he seemed to enjoy that.
The man was insatiable.
“Jesus,” I sighed, still twitching. “Fuck . . . Lucius.”
Silence met me, punctuated only by one final, devilish lick against my oversensitive flesh. Summoning what little strength I had, I swatted at his head in a clumsy attempt to remind him I was more than an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Done?” His voice dripped dark indulgence.
