He kissed my forehead, warm and firm, cutting off the rest.
“You’re done,” he murmured, voice quiet but final. “For tonight.”
“I still need to?—”
“No,” he replied. “You don’t.”
Griff pushed off the post and moved in behind me, fingers finding the collar of my coat. “Let us have this, Tam.”
Before I could protest, he eased the coat off my shoulders with careful hands. It slid down my arms and he caught it, folding it over one arm instead of just tossing it somewhere. His knuckles brushed the back of my neck along the way, sending a fiery bolt of desire straight down to my core.
“I smell politics,” Nox said from the bed. “And frustration. And not nearly enough food.”
“That’s because there was none,” I said. I hadn’t meant it as a complaint, but it came out sounding like one.
Eamon made a disapproving noise. “You didn’t eat.”
“I forgot,” I said.
“You worked through three meal bells,” Bishop said from the window. “Four, if you count the one you skipped at midday.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “I keep track.”
Of course he did.
Elias’s hand slid down from my cheek to my shoulder. “You can argue with us tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, you’re ours.”
“I’m already yours,” I said.
“Then let us act like it,” Griff said.
Eamon stepped closer, the cloth and basin steam in his hands. “Sit,” he said, nodding toward the edge of the bed.
“I’m not?—”
“Tamsin,” he said, in the same tone he used on patients who insisted they were fine with a broken arm, but for me, probably meant a spanking.
I sighed and let them herd me without putting up a real fight. My boots thudded softly on the floor as I sat. My legs ached in ways I hadn’t realized until I stopped moving.
“Boots,” Griff said.
I started to bend, but he was already kneeling in front of me, big hands deftly undoing the laces. He slid one boot off, then the other, his fingers warm around my ankles.
“That’s better,” he murmured.
Eamon dipped the cloth into the basin, wrung it out until it was just damp, and then knelt in front of me on the other side. He reached up and gently bathed my face with the cloth. Bliss. Then he took one of my hands in his and began to wash it with slow, careful strokes, wiping away the faint ink smudges and city grime. The water was warm. It felt really nice.
Elias sat down on the bed beside me, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine. Griff rose and moved behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders, thumbs pressing into the tight muscles at the base of my neck.
I sucked in a breath as he kneaded a knot loose.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly. “Just right—keep going.”
He did, silently working down the line of my neck and across my shoulders, finding tension I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying until he massaged it all out. Eamon finished with one hand and took the other, repeating the same slow ritual.
