Cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I surreptitiously wiped the side of my hand across it. Always the problem with lies—the further you went, the more likely the catch. I flexed the estate veins that I had carefully cultivated beneath the row. They pulsed, answering back.Control.
“Not yet. We need to establish evidence first. He’ll never believe us otherwise.”
Disappointment, trust. She sighed against my pillow and shivered as the magic raced through the beams of the room.
There was no way I was telling Dresden anything. I wasn’t even sure why I was tellingMariettathis. Better for me to sequester her with her brother and carry on myself.
I tried to say that. My mouth opened but nothing emerged. I tried again.
“Gabriel?”
“Nothing.” I shed the rest of my clothes and slid inside, pulling her against me.
It wasn’t healthy, this want, this hunger, to have her beside me.
What was it that made me unable to let her go? Because she could decipher me with an ease that eluded every other woman in my considerable acquaintance? Because I liked sparring with her? Because she made me want to tell her things I’d never told anyone?
Why did my hands curl harder around her?
She said she wasn’t beautiful.
My mind was already conjuring images of her face lost to lust. How she responded to my touch. How she looked as she broke apart. I had never seen anything more beautiful.
She said she was too opinionated.
I hated doormats. I liked her spark.
She said her magic was weak.
The gilded and their ignorant notions of family magic be damned. The skills she’d naturally perfected were exactly the ones most suited to my work. And her core and veins opening beneath my hands wasaddictive.
She wanted control.
The voice in my head stayed silent.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”
“You haven’t said a word for an entire minute. And you are looking at me as if I’m a summer roach.”
I wiped my face of expression. “We should search the address and see what we find. Perhaps we find nothing on the stalker. But perhaps we do.”
I could spin a tale no matter what we found, leaving out John and anything to do with either me or my family.
I’d protected Lucian my entire life. I would take the fall, if it came down to it. No question. No hesitation. My brother came before everything.
“Should we go now?”
I traced the shadows beneath her eyes with my thumb, the fragile skin betraying exhaustion and worry. Was it any wonder, after all, that she had sparked something in me from the first? Concern for her brother outstripping everything, including self-preservation.
“In the morning.” I dipped below the covers, making her arch again, sending magic racing along her skin. “We can use the daylight instead of having to rely on lamps and lights. The neighbors might notice.”
“And how are we going to get inside?” Her breath hitched. Her fingers twisted in the sheets.
“Leave that to me.”
~*~
