I don’t like this,he told me, his thoughts taut.The blonde.
It was your choice,I reminded him.
He didn’t answer.
When I raised my head to look at him, his jaw looked clenched.
“Sorry,” I said aloud, but soft. “Did I interrupt your conversation?”
He shifted his body to one side without speaking, and pulled my leg and knee around towards the back of the chair. Shifting the other way, he yanked my other knee and thigh up on his other side, so that I sat astride him. Gripping my arse in both hands, he dragged me up against him. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but it made him smirk.
Too far?He quirked an eyebrow.Say the word, Shadow.
He held my gaze, his expression unmoving. When I didn’t respond, something in his eyes grew more heated. Still staring at me, he wrapped an arm around my waist.
I glanced slightly to my right, and found Voltaire and Scar.
Instead of staring at us like I’d expected, they seemed to have relaxed into the normalcy of the situation. The two of them were talking to Pants and several other mages who sat across from them, now about some movie they’d all seen at Bonescastle Theater. I saw Scar flag down a goblin to order more drinks, and noticed his hand lazily massaging the breast of the witch he’d brought with him. He pulled down the top of her dress as I watched, exposing both of her breasts to the night air, but she only sipped at her drink, seemingly indifferent.
“Hey.”
I returned my eyes to Bones.
“Poor form, love,” he said softly. At my pursed lips, he jerked his jaw in the direction I’d been staring. “Looking at other mages, especially right now. We may talk shit, but we generally don’t gawk.”
I nearly snorted.Only when you’re getting public blowjobs?
A muscle on his face ticked. He shrugged, his expression unmoving.We were a lot drunker when that happened. And it came from a specific dare.He quirked an eyebrow.Are you hoping someone dares me to eat your pussy in front of them? I can start a pool, if you want.
I felt myself flush.
He tugged on my lower back with his fingers, a near question. Walking closer to him on my knees, I looked down when his spine turned liquid a second time, his back arching seemingly outside of his control. His hands gripped my waist, and he pulled me closer still, so that my crotch pressed firmly against his.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
That time, his fingers tightened insistently in the straight, blonde hair he’d given me. Without warning, he pulled my mouth to his.
He’d kissed me before.
He kissed me on the Great Lawn in front of the Fountain of the Furies, almost exactly a year ago now, and honestly, it messed me up for weeks. At the time of the kiss itself, it shocked me more than anything, enough that I couldn’t think at all while he actually did it.
To be fair, I nearly died that night.
My brother nearly died. I’d been in shock. I’d just taken a bath in the freezing cold lake, mostly to wash an entire layer of my aunt’s blood off my skin. Bones had just been shouting at me and threatening me. He’d then thrown me completely off-balance with the kiss, so I hadn’t been able to view it with anything approaching objectivity.
I’d told myself I didn’t care about any of that anymore.
He had, after all, made it crystal clear what he thought of me afterwards.
I’d maybe known there was some rationalization going on there, some wishful thinking on my part, at least. I’d been avoiding what was going on with this bizarre “arrangement” I found myself in with him again, after it nearly wrecked me the first time. I’d told myself I didn’t care. I’d repeated itad nauseam,maybe to convince myself.
Even tonight. What in theUnderworld godswas I doing?
Why hadn’t I found some way to listen in from a distance, like he’d done with Golden Sun? Why hadn’thesuggested that, or tried it, at least? Why had we chosen to do itthisway, knowing exactly what would be expected of both of us?
For him, it couldn’t possibly matter.
After all, as we’d just established from my light scan of Maskey, and from Bones’s own admission, at least one of thewomen he’d brought to these “gatherings” had given him head in front of all of them. This was a routine for him, something he did to appease his father, and to get off with a warm body as a prop, at least. He’d made it more than clear he was used to strange women having their hands and mouths and whatever else on every part of him. He barely seemed to care who it was, even when it was me.
