I hurried out into the hall and caught her just as she reached the stairs. “You okay?”
She turned around, a look of surprise washing over her face. She was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie — her at-home uniform. Other than the time we’d run into each other outsidethe sauna, the closest I’d come to seeing the details of her body was when she went to her shift at Burger Haven dressed in their requisite black pants and white shirt, but even those were too big, designed to leave everything to the imagination.
I still dreamed about the way her bare tits had felt in my hands at the beach, the way her nipple had felt under my tongue, her hot cunt tight around my fingers.
Just thinking about it was enough to send me over the edge, but I hadn’t been able to actually see her, and I was surprised to find the mystery of her body only made me more excited by the possibility of finally exploring it.
“Yeah,” she said. “Can’t sleep, as usual.”
I dropped my gaze to the knife in her hand, a sleek silver number that was probably easy to conceal but capable of doing some damage if she knew how to use it.
“You always carry a knife when you can’t sleep?”
She looked down at the knife, like she was surprised to find herself holding it. “I didn’t used to,” she said. “But now that Vic is out there…”
“Is that really why you’re carrying it around the house?” I wanted to believe she wasn’t still scared of us. “Because of Lombardi?”
“Mostly.” She slipped the knife into her hoodie, then tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear.
I had an image of it splayed out on my pillow, imagined the silk of it in my fingers, then silently cursed myself when I became hard.
“Jude’s not home,” I said, because I didn’t know what to say about the knife and talking about Jude was better than saying, “Looking at you makes my dick hard.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Working,” I said. “He and Rafe.”
She nodded but didn’t ask the question in her eyes.
“My grilled cheese isn’t as good as Jude’s, but I can try,” I said.
“That’s okay. I shouldn’t be up anyway. I should try to sleep.”
I walked toward her, then held out my hand. “Come lay with me. At least you won’t be alone.”
It was a bad idea, but what could I say? I was past the point of thinking I could resist her.
She hesitated, then took my hand.
I led her to my room, glad the light on the bedside table was on so it wasn’t pitch dark. The curtains were open because I liked to wake up to the sun, but there was no moonlight, the view dark beyond the glass.
“Okay if I shut the door?” I’d learned to ask questions with Lilah I wouldn’t have thought to ask with any other woman. I still half expected her to run if I moved too fast, to pull away if I brushed her arm or bumped up against her.
She nodded.
I closed the door and leaned against it, watching her take in the room, trying to see what she saw: a simply furnished but luxurious room with dark wood furniture, a king-size bed, a sofa in front of a fireplace with the embers burning low.
Like all the bedrooms in the house, mine had an attached bath, but the door was half-closed, the light off.
“Your room is nice,” she said, walking the length of it, investigating the books on my bookshelf. “Cozy.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I like it.”
I walked to the mini-fridge under the counter on one side of the room and pulled out a bottle of water. Rafe and Jude had a mini-fridge too, all of them tucked discreetly within cabinets under a long dark counter attached to the wall.
None of us were in the habit of bringing women home to the house, but sometimes you wanted a drink or a snack without hiking downstairs.
I held out the water and she took it from my hand. “You have a fridge up here?”