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When he did turn, it was slow, deliberate, like a man used to controlling more dangerous urges than desire. His weathered face, all brutal angles and healed fractures, came into view beneath short dark hair, still damp from a recent shower. Instead of rushing me along, he’d showered elsewhere. A muscle flickered along his jaw.
His gray eyes, pale and unreadable, met mine. That was where it lived, the heat. Not in the flex of his chest or the subtle roll of his hips as he faced me, but in the way his gaze swept over me, slow and unflinching, as if he could see through the fabric I wore and into the thoughts I hadn’t dared speak aloud.
Admittedly, there weren’t many of those. Something about Bones made me happy to tell him off. I certainly seemed to throw things at him a lot.
Yet, there was restraint in the set of his mouth, in the way his arms remained at his sides, but in his eyes, that cold steel turned smoldering, and seemed to house a promise of everything he wasn’t saying.
As much as I might want to hear all the things he didn’t vocalize, I wasn’t going to force it. Not when we had so much to do. What had he said earlier? We couldn’t afford to be distracted. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t have to. The room pulsed with it anyway.
All the moisture in my mouth had dried up but I forced myself to wet my lips as I yanked my gaze off of him. “Something smells good.” At least that came out relatively normal without a squeak to betray me. I carried my clothes over to the bag and stuffed them into the side pocket.
“It’s soup, mostly,” Bones said. “A couple of sandwiches. Light but hearty.”
“Sounds good,” I said over my shoulder. “Smells good too. Just getting my things out for tomorrow.” Voodoo had brought me gear. There was a vest for me too, but they hadn’t put it in my bag, it was in Bones’. As if reading my thoughts, he set the vest down on the dresser next to my stack of clothes.
His nearness was so close, the heat of him brushed against me. “Come eat,” he said, running his fingers down my arm. Goosebumps raced over my skin at the contact. The food was on a tray at the foot of the bed. He’d moved over and pulled back the covers on the side of the bed farthest from the door. “This is you.”
“Okay.” The jittering of my nerves left me unsettled, but I tried not to focus on that. Instead, I climbed into the bed and he tugged the covers over my legs even as I pulled them up to sitcross-legged. Then he moved the tray between us as he took a seat on my side of the bed facing me.
As promised, there was soup and sandwiches under the domes. There were also two bottles of water. He loosened the first top then tightened it again before setting it on my side, then opened his own.
Beef barley soup, I hadn’t had this in forever, and grilled cheese sandwiches. The bread was thick and fluffy. I spread a napkin over my lap for crumbs, but still leaned forward to eat over the tray.
“Do you want to talk to me about anything before tomorrow?” Honestly, that wasn’t the question I intended to ask when I glanced up to find him studying me. Still, it was the question that slipped out.
“I should be asking you that,” he said.
Shrugging, I downed the last of the soup before reaching for my water bottle. I’d been a lot hungrier than I realized. “But I asked first, ergo, you get to answer first.”
His lips twitched, a vague suggestion of movement. “Has anyone ever mentioned to you whether or not stubbornness is an attractive quality?”
“No,” I said, recapping the water. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
His chuckle was so soft and unexpected, it floored me. Was I supposed to have seen this side of him? Was it an accident? Or had he really just let me in behind the walls he kept up? The chuckle itself was so low it seemed almost barely there but there was a warmth to it that wrapped me up in a hug.
The way it lingered in the air, Bones appeared almost surprised by it except… Except his eyes were more molten steel than cold. The chuckle itself was full of layers and I wanted desperately to have recorded it so I could keep it forever. Yet,I wasn’t likely to forget this moment. Fleeting as it might have been, it was going to stay with me.
As long as this moment lasted, holding us utterly suspended, he didn’t respond. So, I gave him an out after I wiped my mouth from eating the last bite of the sandwich. “Don’t think I didn’t notice your lack of an answer, there. But I’m going to do you a favor.”
“Are you?” He rose, removing the tray from the bed and carrying it over to the dresser. With his back to me, I could enjoy watching him move. There was nothing spare about him at all. Everything was just corded muscle and sinew.
“Yes,” I said, scooting down under the covers to hide the fact I’d been ogling. He shut off the lights, robbing me of the view. I would have complained except he was just there and sliding under with me. Man moved like a ghost.
“What favor is that?” He curled an arm around me and dragged me back against him until my back was snug to his chest and his hand spread against my abdomen. A full body shudder rippled over me as he slipped a finger beneath the waistband of my panties.
The fact he punctuated the question with his teeth scraping over my earlobe threatened to short-circuit my response. When he bit down on my earlobe, I ground my ass back against him. Need unspooled so violently, I thought I was going to come just from his fingers sliding down to stroke my clit.
“Fuck…” The word left me on a groan.
“You wanted an orgasm for sleeping,” he murmured in that decadently deep tone that seemed a caress all its own. “So let me do this for you.”
“I want to touch you.” It came out a protest with a hint of whining, but he just continued to stroke his mouth from my ear to my throat. The pressure of his bite had my pussy clenching.
“Not yet,” he said. “Give me this, darling, open your legs and let me have this.”
“You can have anything you want,” I gasped out each word as he increased the pressure of his fingers. There was no reticence in him, no teasing, he was sending me down an ever tightening spiral of pleasure.
“Good girl,” he practically hummed the words. “Give me your cries. Come for me.”