“I know. And I needed you.”
She flinched, almost invisible. Then the wall was back in place, the queen behind her bar. “Lock up, Dante.”
He watched her head for the door. Snow waited on the other side, and the square, and the path toward her little place up the lane. He wanted to follow. He wanted to pull her back and start again, slower, deeper, sweeter. He wanted too much.
She paused with her hand on the latch and spoke without turning. “Don’t read into it.”
“Too late.”
“Then that’s your problem.” She opened the door. Cold rushed in. She stepped into it like it belonged to her. “Lock up,” she said again, and was gone.
He stood there, chest rising and falling, cock still thick and aching despite the release, hands itching for her skin. Furious with the want. Furious with the way she’d walked out like he was a fire she’d used to warm her hands and nothing else.
“Fine,” he told the empty room. He picked up his shirt, dragged it on, and moved the chair, because Maeve Cross said lock up and he always did what she told him, even when it killed him.
He checked the back door, set the chair under the front handle, and turned off the lamps until the hearth was the only light left. He stood there another long minute, breathing in her scent that still hung thick in the air and let the want burn clean.
“Round two,” he said to the quiet, promising it to the night, to the Veil, to himself. “Soon.”
19
MAEVE
Morning came too soon and too bright.
Maeve sat at her kitchen table, nursing coffee that had gone lukewarm while she stared at nothing. Her apartment felt smaller than usual. Walls pressing in. The silence too loud.
Her body ached in all the right places. Reminded her with every shift of muscle exactly what she'd done last night. What she'd let Dante do to her against the tavern wall while her defenses burned to ash.
Her lioness purred at the memory. Satisfied. Smug.
Maeve told it to shut up and drank cold coffee.
She should open the tavern. It was almost nine, past her usual start time. But the thought of going downstairs, of seeing that wall, of smelling him still lingering in the wood and air, made her stomach twist.
She'd used him. Let him touch her because she'd needed to forget Hector's words, needed something fierce and hot to burn away the shame of almost shifting in front of everyone who mattered. And Dante had given her exactly that. Had looked at her as if she hung the moon while he made her forget her own problems.
That was the problem.
He'd looked at her like it meant something. Like they were building toward something instead of just scratching an itch born of rage and proximity and a mate bond she refused to acknowledge.
A knock at her apartment door made her jump, coffee sloshing over the rim of her cup.
She knew who it was before she opened it. Could smell him through the wood. Pine smoke and frigid winter and the lingering scent of her own arousal that probably still clung to his skin.
Maeve set her cup down and opened the door.
Dante looked like he hadn't slept. His golden hair was rumpled, his jacket unzipped, and his amber eyes tracked over her face like he was checking for damage. He held two cups from the Griddle and Grind, steam rising from the lids.
"Brought coffee," he said. "Figured you might need it."
"I have coffee."
"Better coffee." He held out one cup. "Can I come in?"
"No."
"Maeve—"
