If I knew about it, I was certain he did too.He spent a lot more time in their bedroom than I did.
“You already know what’s in it for you,” I cooed. “More of those pages you’re just dying to get your hands on.” I twisted back around to face her, my arms crossed over my chest and a black t-shirt dangling from one of my hands. “You know, it’s not very polite to go reading someone’s diary,myshka.”
She quirked a brow at me. “Where do you keep them anyway?” she asked after a long, dramatic sigh.
“Tell you what…” I shoved the dresser drawer shut with an elbow, spread my arms out to the sides, and planted my feet a few inches apart. “If you can find one on me, you can keep it.”
“On you?” She took a tentative step forward until we were standing toe-to-toe. “Right now.”
“Right now.” I grinned. “Find it, and it’s yours.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
BELLATRIX
Idropped to my knees, yanking Casper’s boxers down with me, and stared up at him through my lashes. He smiled, and I shook my head and pushed back to my feet before he got the idea this was going somewhere it wasn’t.
I wasn’t horny anymore. I was fucking annoyed.
I kicked each of his legs farther apart and moved aside to get a better look at him. There were only so many places a little piece of paper could be hiding on someone’s person, and something told me it wouldn’t be inside any of the usual suspects.
Or who knows? Maybe the fucker wanted my hand digging around in his asshole. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I stepped around his spread feet, ducking under his raised arms, and took in every inch of his bare skin. My eyes scanning over the water droplets trickling along the intricate tattoos, the hidden and not-so-hidden surgical scars, the healed-over burns, the old cylindrical bullet wounds, the occasional mole, and everything in-between.
It was hard to find anything that appeared out of place when all of it appearedout of place. Like a fucked-up roadmap of someone’s more fucked-up life.
By the time I made it back around to the front of his body, he was grinning at me. His nostrils flaring when his lips tugged up and to the sides. There was nothing up there that I could see. Nothing behind his ears either.
I grabbed his wrist and scraped a nail between each of his fingers. I repeated the process with his toes before stepping around to his back for a second time. Running a hand down his spine to the little divots above his ass.
I swear they were winking at me.
“How’d you get this one again?” I tapped on the oldest, most-jagged scar on his back. The one that, judging by how faded it was compared to the others, seemed to have been there the longest. The first scar if I were to bet on it.
He didn’t move or pull away when I ran the pad of my thumb over the raised skin. He did freeze, though. Which was practically the same thing. Sometimes someone’s tell was when they did nothing at all. Especiallysomeonewho was constantly doingsomething.
He turned his head to the side and flicked his eyes in my direction. He was still grinning but I could tell it was more forced this time. There was no humor, no spark behind it. What there was, was a shit-ton of deflection. “Let’s just say it took me a few tries to finally land that trick on the bike.”
He was lying. Just like he was lying when he told me that story about his cousin and jumping off the roof. My guess was, whatever happened to his back, it was a lot more personal than he was willing to let on. With me or anyone else.
It was hard not to be curious about it. And not because I cared. But because he cared about keeping it a secret.
“So, you find it yet or you giving up already?” Casper asked.
Ignoring his taunting, I lowered onto my haunches. Tracing a finger over his ass crack, between his cheeks, before finally biting the bullet and digging deeper. He didn’t clench, which made it much easier to fish around and find nothing. He did, however, grab his cock and start stroking it from base to tip.
I reached around and slapped his hand away, and he leaned back to look at me again. “You’re more than welcome to do it yourself, babe. But you can’t shove a finger up a guy’s ass and expect him not to wanna get off afterwards.”
He was trying to distract me. The same way I’d been trying to distract him when I was asking about his scar. His attempt didn’t work any better than mine did. I wanted that little piece of paper… if only to prove to him that I could find it.
I was competitive. I hated losing almost as much as I hated the fucker currently wiggling his dick in my direction like it was a lasso.
I wiped my hands off on his white towel and took another long look at his upper torso—at least he showered first—stepping up behind him and cupping his balls. He groaned, and I cursed. There was nothing between these either. Or tucked into his arm pits, adhered to the bottoms of his feet, threaded into his hair…
I grabbed on to his jaw and forced it open, using the tiny flashlight I kept attached to my bike keys to scope out the roof of his mouth, his cheeks, and under his tongue. When I stuck my finger inside to rub it along the top of his teeth—yes, the same finger I stuck up his ass—he licked at my hand and grinned wider.
One of us was disgusted, and it wasn’t him.
