I’d expected the nausea, the fatigue, the bizarre cravings. Nobody had warned me about the other thing. The thing where I looked at any of my three mates doing absolutely mundane tasksand my brain immediately departed for territories that would make the romance alcove blush.
Percy reaching for a shelf. Percy’s forearm, specifically.
The way the muscle shifted under his skin when he stretched, the scatter of freckles across his wrist, the casual flex of fingers that had held me on a sublevel floor during danger. My brain supplied a vivid, uninvited image of those fingers somewhere else entirely.
Gripping my hips. Pulling me forward. Sliding under the hem of my shirt the way he used when he wanted to watch me come apart.
My mouth went dry. Heat bloomed low in my belly, separate from the babies, deeper, the kind that made my thighs press together and my breath shorten.
“You’re staring,” he said.
“I’m assessing the structural integrity of the shelf.”
“The shelf is behind me.”
“Then I’m assessing the structural integrity of you.”
His grin spread slowly, dimples and all, and his eyes dropped to my mouth with unsubtle focus. His pupils had blown wider, the hazel shrinking to a thin ring, and I watched his tongue drag across his lower lip in a motion so brief it could’ve been unconscious.
“See anything you want?”
“Several things. None of them appropriate for a bookshop.”
“We own the bookshop.”
“We don’t own it. I own it. You three are tenants at best.”
He leaned closer. His breath grazed my neck and heat pooled between my legs with an urgency that made my toes curl inside my shoes. My pulse hammered, loud enough that he could definitely hear it, because supernatural hearing was the universe’s way of ensuring I never maintained dignity.
Percy’s nostrils flared. He could smell it too. The arousal, the want, the biological broadcast my body was sending on every available frequency.
His hand landed on the shelf behind me, caging me in without touching me. The warmth radiating off his chest made my nipples tighten under my shirt. If I tilted my chin up and forward by two inches, my mouth would be on his throat, andGod,I wanted my mouth on his throat.
I wanted my teeth on the tendon that flexed when he swallowed and my tongue tracing the line of his jaw and his hands in my hair pulling my head back so he could do the thing with his mouth on my neck that made me forget how to form sentences.
“Your heart’s going fast,” he murmured. His voice had dropped to the register that vibrated in my chest.
“Your fault.”
“Want me to fix it?”
“Here?”
“Anywhere you want.”
The bell chimed. Solomon walked through the door.
“The plumbing in the back room needs attention,” Solomon said. No greeting or acknowledgment that Percy had me half-pinned against a bookshelf.
He carried a toolbox in one hand and a thermos in the other, and he moved past us toward the storage area with the focused efficiency of a man on a mission.
“Hello to you too,” I called after him.
“The pipe joint is corroded. If it bursts, your inventory takes water damage. Hello.”
I watched him go. Watched the way his shoulders moved under his shirt, the controlled precision of every step, the forearms.
Goddammit. Solomon’s forearms.
