Page 96 of Tide of Treason
A moan slipped out, shamefully soft. I remembered, dimly, I was supposed to be insulted by all this.
“Done,” I bit out, my voice coated in ice. Queenly, or I liked to think so.
He swiped his slick chin across my thigh. “How’d my mouth rank,principessa?”
“Top three.”
He stilled. “Top. Three.”
“Mmhmm.” I let myself bask in the afterglow, shudder still rippling through me. “One of them was a dream, though, so . . .”
We stared at each other. I saw the moment he decided to let the silence win. Lucius finally dragged his fingers out of me, moved up my body, left a cool rush of air to chase the heat he’d started. His gaze devoured the space he’d abandoned.
“Give me the name of the motherfucker who’s in first place.”
I traced my tongue over his jaw, then nipped at his bottom lip, mean and possessive, because I could. His answering growl rumbled through my sternum, a tectonic vibration that made my skin flush with electricity.
“First place is my vibrator.” We both knew if I admitted it was in fact him, I’d never get the upper hand again. Not for the rest of my natural life.
He blinked, then gave a slow, resigned exhale. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I.”
I nodded, letting myself gloat.
Slowly, so slowly it made my nipples peak in anticipation, he propped himself up on one elbow and fisted the pillow beside my head. Gave it a single, hard punch, feathers snowing down in the wake of his frustration. He watched one drift while his expression shifted to a sort ofdistant contemplation, which was never a good thing.
Lucius was plotting.
And I had a bad feeling it’d be at my expense.
I was right.
Between mouth-watering orgasms and sleepy, half-dressed makeout sessions, we lazed around his penthouse, drinking straight from crystal glasses of pomegranate juice and eating leftover pastries off each other’s fingers. He cooked for me. Badly. I laughed when he burned the eggs, rolled my eyes when he scowled at the smoke detector, and shoved a powdered sugar-dusted cannoli in his mouth to shut him up.
Lucius put his head in my lap while I ran my fingers through his curls, pretending not to notice how he leaned into every touch like he’d been starved of softness his entire life. I traced the sharp lines of his cheekbones, followed the cut of his jaw, and marveled at how a man so ruthless could look so beautiful when he let himself be held. Contrasts obsessed me: dark skin against my pallor, youth against my thirty well-lived years, the rough catch of Portuguese in his voice scraping against my Ivy League vowels.
He made me tea—once. The taste was god awful, steeped too long, bitter as hell, but I swallowed every scorching mouthful because he’d bruised his knuckles on gentleness for me. Twenty minutes later, I was face down on the couch withhis mouth somewhere below my navel, murmuring about how I tasted sweeter.
I thought about telling him I was pregnant exactly four times.
Each time, I chickened out due to the simple, stupid hope that something this good might last a little longer if I kept it hidden.
He kissed me while I was brushing my teeth. Tugged my panties to the side while I was slicing fruit, lips teasing my throat as I gripped the counter. He fucked me against the window while the city blinked back at us, none the wiser. We fogged up the window so bad the condensation spelled our names, or maybe that was just my guilty conscience dripping down the glass in cursive.
“Mine,” he growled.
During that week, there were little details that sank their claws into me and wouldn’t let go.
Lucius kept all his jackets in alphabetical order, but didn’t own a single pair of matching socks. Hated when I left the lights on. Grumbled about wasted energy, like he was single-handedly funding ConEd, yet somehow forgot the stove was on half the time. His voicemail was full, but he’d saved every text I’d ever sent. Every single one.
He told me the tally marks were one for every time he should’ve died and two for the times he’d wanted to.
I didn’t ask about the rest. Curiosity kills, and I wasn’t ready to bury myself that day. He hadn’t told me about his mother, either—I knew because he went absolutely still whenthe subject limped into a room.
He shaved every other dawn, but not for vanity.
“Can’t stand the feeling of the blade if I let it grow too long.”
He admitted it while stretching in front of the bathroom mirror. There were too many mornings like this, me curled at the edge of the tub, knees drawn to my chest, studying the tattooed geography of his forearms while he shaved. I tried to count the ripples in his back—trapezius, latissimus, deltoid—but always lost track after his biceps because he was so damn sexy and, honestly, the audacity of this man’s physique bordered on insulting.
