Page 34

W e’re early back to the Warren.

After that sad waltz with Ree, I don’t want to dance anymore.

After the confrontation with Jaxon, Kez doesn’t feel like partying.

We’re quiet as we return home. Smile silently at each other when we find Gig and Sylvie cuddled up together on the couch, surrounded by a flotilla of fuzzballs.

We leave them asleep after turning off the v-game they were playing – he really did break level forty-three, the fucker – and retreat to Kez’s room.

Ke puts on a nightgown after taking off her genSkin, which surprises me. She usually sleeps in a nightgown so she doesn’t stick to me, but she doesn’t put it on until after we’ve had sex.

“Tired, kitten?”

She nods and sits down on her bed. Pulls her knees to her chest. Watches me as I finish stowing all my knives.

She seems to come to some internal decision.

She scoots down the bed and kneels at the bottom near the baby-bunny ramp.

Tugs my belt free, unfastens my pants. I don’t object to her undressing me.

Ain’t the first time. But something about this is off.

She’s not looking up at me. Not grinning her sexy, mischievous grin.

If anything, she looks pensive. The way she looked during our night at the Cloud Palace.

I stop her with my hand on her wrist as she reaches into my skivvies. “Thought you were tired,” I say.

“I’m not too tired,” she says, but there’s no enthusiasm in her voice.

“What if I am?”

She snorts. “You’re never too tired.”

She’s right, and I’m not at the moment. But I’m also not in the mood for obligatory sex, and that’s what it feels like she’s doing.

I want sweet, cuddly sex to make up for the last day and night.

Which we can do after she’s slept for a couple of hours if she really is tired.

Although I’m not convinced she is. Somethin’s very off.

I strip off my pants and boots but leave my skivvies on as I cross to the door and push down the crossbar I’ve installed over the rabbit-door.

Tigger usually manages to get through it anyway, and the bar’s got an automatic release set for midnight so the rabbits can sleep on Kez’s bed.

But that’s still an hour off, which gives me some true alone-time with Kez.

I don’t mind the rabbits sleeping with us.

I just don’t like them watching us fuck.

I feel like they’re scoring my damn performance.

After I’ve barred the bunny-door, I return to the bed. Pat the mattress next to me. Kez scoots over to me and reaches again for my crotch.

“No.” I guide her hand away. “Lie down. On your front.”

She doesn’t pout, which she would if she wasn’t getting her way and she really cared about what we were doing. She lies down across the bed. Reaches down below her hips and pulls the nightgown up until it bares her ass.

Okay, if that’s where she wants it.

I stretch one leg across the backs of her thighs. The other along the length of her body. That puts my foot up near her head. Hope my feet don’t stink. I lean over and begin rubbing her firm ass with long, smooth strokes of my fingers and thumbs.

“Hale, what are you doing?”

“Givin’ you an ass rub.”

“Why?”

“Cause you seem to need it. Want to tell me why you keep goin’ after my dick?”

She blows out a breath, a steam-engine exhalation. “Can’t we just fuck?”

“Nope.” I work my way down the backs of her thighs.

Back up into the muscles of her butt. Her muscles are tight even when she’s sleeping, but now they’re as taut as high-tension wires.

I dig my fingers in, until I feel her begin to relax.

Just as think she’s unwinding enough to tell me what’s wrong, she pikes up on her arms and pulls away from me.

Yanks the nightgown down over her knees and curls into a ball against the head of the bed.

“Why don’t you want to fuck me?” she demands.

I do, but not when she’s wound tighter than a tension coil. I stretch across the end of her bed. Pat the mattress again. Blow away the cloud of bunny fur that rises around my hand. Damn rabbits.

“I don’t want a butt rub,” she says. Now she’s pouting.

“I want to give you one.”

“Hale.” She crosses her arms over her knees and drops her head into them. “Why am I so bad at this?”

“Ass rubbin’?”

“No,” she groans into her arms.

“Kitten, come here.”

She looks up and I see tears in her eyes. What the fuck?

“Hey.” I slide up the bed. Gather her in my arms. “What happened? First you’re tired. Then you’re trying to give me a hand-job. Then you’re trying to get me to fuck you in the ass. Now you’re crying. What’s going on, kitten?”

“I can’t do it right with you,” she wails.

I smooth her bangs back from her face. “You do everything right with me. What’re you cryin’ about? ”

“You don’t want me to give you head. You don’t want to dance with me?—”

Now I get it. The green-eyed monster has reared its ugly head. I shoulda known dancing like that with Myhre would set Kez off.

“C’mere.” I pull her up off the bed and into my arms.

The first couple of steps, I hold her at arm’s length. Until she realizes what I’m doing. Then I reel her in. Hold her tight while I sway to the rhythm of her heartbeat, since there’s no other music. “I’ll dance with you anytime,” I whisper into her ear.

She presses into me. Reaches up and clasps her hands behind my neck. “You still smell like her,” she says resentfully. “That perfume she wears.”

“Strong, huh? Did I ever tell you how glad I am you don’t wear any?”

She sniffles. “No?”

“I like the way you smell. Just yourself. No fake flowers.”

She sways with me. “I’m allergic,” she says, which doesn’t surprise me. This isn’t the first thing she’s been allergic to, my pale, sensitive kitten. “Not to everything. But a lot of perfumes make my nose run.”

“Ree’s woulda if you’d been dancin’ with her. Whether or not you were allergic. It was all up my nose.”

“She doesn’t want to dance with me.” Still resentful.

“Kitten, she doesn’t really want to dance with me, either. She’s lost the man she wants to dance with. She’s just makin’ do.”

Kez lifts her head in surprise. “She has? Who?”

“Sokun Tyng.”

“Sokun? Tyng’s son? He was contracted. And ... oh.”

“Yeah, just like that.”

“I thought—” She trails off. Hot pink stains her cheeks, and it’s not arousal.

“I know what you thought. Since you didn’t know about Ree’s thing for Sokun, I can understand why you thought it, comin’ from her direction. What I can’t understand is why you thought there was anything from mine.”

She buries her face in my chest. “I’m an idiot.”

I kiss the top of her head. Cuddle and sway until we’re close to the bed, then pull her down into it and roll her under me. Kiss her and look down into her flushed face when I say, “Have I ever given you a minute’s doubt?”

“No,” she admits, and she looks so miserable, so remorseful, that I almost back off. But this jealousy shit has got to stop. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’ll think I don’t trust you, and I do, it’s not like that.”

It’s exactly like that. “Am I anythin’ like him?” I ask.

“Like who? Chain? No.” She shakes her head vehemently, rasping the stubble of her hair against the pillow.

“Then why would I act like him?”

“Guys do?—”

“ Not all guys, Kez. Every one of your exes sleep with Nev?”

She squeezes her eyes closed. Doesn’t answer me. That takes me aback.

“Kitten, has more than one of your guys slept with Nev?”

“Every guy I know has slept with Nevie,” she whispers. “Except you.”

That can’t be true. “What about your boy, Renn?”

“That’s how I met him.”

Fuck. I already know Duncan’s been in Nev’s bed, and that’s why Kez wouldn’t let him near hers. “Not Ape. And not fucking Gig.” I can’t believe they’d be that stupid.

“Both of them. Separately and together.”

That’s more than I wanted to know. “Has she fucked the whole planet?”

Kez grimaces. “Just most of Nock. And some of Hemos.”

“Kitten.” I lean in and kiss her. “I promise you, I will never, ever sleep with Nev. Or Myhre. Or anyone else you know.”

“How can you say that?” Those big, wounded blues search my face.

“Easy.” I’m not a two-year old and I don’t get led around by my dick.

“First of all, you’re the only person I want to fuck.

Second, even if you dumped me and jumped into bed with Acker, I wouldn’t ever fuck anyone you know.

It would hurt you.” I cup her face in my hand.

“I’m not in the business of hurting my kitten. ”

“Oh, God, Hale.” She burrows into me like she’s trying to get inside my skin. I help her. Hold her close. Kiss what I can reach of her face. Rock her against me until she finally settles and sighs and begins kissing my chest.

“You really think anyone else could give me what you do?” I ask her. “You’re my one in a billion.”

She chuckles into my neck. “So I’m one of twenty-seven.”

“How’s that?”

“Aren’t there like twenty-seven billion people in the universe? That means I’m one of twenty-seven.”

Silly kitten. “Then you’re my one in twenty-seven billion. There’s no one else for me, Kez. I’ve been waitin’ for you my whole life.”

She lifts her face, worms up until we’re nose to nose. “Really?”

“Yeah, c’mon, you know that.”

She shakes her head, rubbing her nose against mine. “What about Marin?”

“Fuck, kitten.” Is she seriously jealous of that ghost? “Marin was a pretty girl I saw in a crowd compared to what I got with you.”

“So she was pretty?”

She would fixate on that. “Yeah, she was pretty. And smart. And I admired her. What little I knew of her. Which wasn’t fucking much since I knew her for a grand total of eighty hours?—”

“What? I thought?—”