“Sylvie,” I said. “Wait.”
“No.” Her voice came out flat, like a smack to the face—worse for its lack of emotion.
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Do you know what you’re sorry for?” She yanked her wrist out of my hold, picked up our plates, and circled the table to put them in the dishwasher.
I followed her into the kitchen. “I should have told you about Silas,” I said. “About who he was, that he was missing, and how that connected with Emily Shaw’s death.”
“Her murder,” she reminded me.
“Her murder,” I said. “I didn’t do anything differently because of Silas.”
Sylvie’s eyes narrowed on me, and she gave an abrupt shake of her head, rejecting my statement. “You can’t know that. And that’s not the point.”
“I don’t know what the point is,” I said. “I don’t know how to apologize.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “Look, I wouldn’t expect you to prioritize someone you just met over your boss, who you’re worried about. It’s fine.”
The words were right, but the tone was all wrong, because it wasn’t fine. And I realized I had a choice between two worlds.
One was the world where Sylvie let me off thehook, because of course I wouldn’t have told her. We barely knew each other. Our search for Silas was protected by the NDA, but still top secret. And it was important. I was worried. Sylvie wasn’t even a client. Worse, she was a journalist.
But in that world, Sylvie wasn’t important—and that wasn’t the world I wanted to live in.
I wanted the world where she was furious and throwing things at me, because even though we’d only known each other a few days, she mattered. I should have told her what was going on with Silas. Not just because it impacted our search for whoever had killed Emily Shaw and tried to kill Sylvie, but because she was important to me. In that world, I was a raging asshole, but I’d take it if we could both agree that Sylvie mattered.
“Look,” I said, “I handled this all wrong. I just… I kept thinking I’d talk to you about it later, and then?—”
“Later came sooner than you thought,” she said, looking past me so she didn’t have to meet my eyes. “Eli, I told you it’s fine. Emmett said we’re getting closer. We’re going to find the guy who blew up my van and killed Emily, and then I can go back to my life, and you can go back to finding Silas and whatever else it was you were doing. No harm, no foul, okay? Let’s just let it be that.”
I stood in front of her, hands at my sides, utterly without words.
Maybe I’d been reading this all wrong. Maybe while I was lying next to her, putting up picket fences, she was just enjoying a few orgasms during an otherwise very inconvenient phase of her life. Maybe she wasn’t yelling and throwing things at me because she truly didn’t care.
And then I thought of her coming to stand next to me in the cemetery. Sylvie putting her head on my shoulder for comfort. The way she unraveled in my arms.
No, I wasn’t reading this wrong.
“Eli,” she said. “I’m just going to?—”
She moved as if to walk past me, and I broke, closing my hands over her shoulders. I stopped her. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” I said.
I kissed her.
And here, finally, was Sylvie. Her mouth moved under mine. Hands coming up to sink into my hair, fingers curving, holding me tight, her tongue sliding against mine. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her as close as I could get. I wasn’t having any luck with words, but maybe I could show her how I felt. Dragging my mouth from hers, I scooped her into my arms and carried her down the hall. She twined her arms around my neck, craning up to close her teeth over the side of my jaw.
“Hurry up,” she breathed against my skin.
I practically flew to the bedroom we’d been sharing, setting her on her feet only long enough to pull her shirt over her head, shove down her jeans, and lift her. I tossed her on the bed and pulled the jeans from where they’d puddled around her feet. She lay back, lifting her arms above her head, arching her back—her full breasts sliding to the sides, round and plump. She looked at me with hot eyes, no longer flat or polite in the least.
“Get undressed,” she ordered.
I was happy to follow that command, dropping my clothes in a pile on top of hers. I dove onto the bed, kneeling on the end, running my hands up the insides of her legs. I pushed them up and back at her knees, spreading her wide.
And then I feasted.
I already knew I loved the taste of Sylvie—salty and sweet—but it was the sounds she made as I licked andtasted. The surprised gasps, the keening cry. I sucked on her clit, sliding a finger inside, then a second, stroking her slick heat until she came in my mouth, crying out my name.
