I stared into the eyes of murder itself. Hate. Rage incarnate.
It would have been intimidating as hell if it had been anyone other than Ryo Tanaka.
The fucking nerd had the gall to look at me like I’d done him some great offense.
I guess there was a small justification. His face was bloodied. One palm had a burn that sat firmly in the second degree and ranged dangerously close to third in some spots. The faint scent of seared flesh still lingered in the air. Two of the fingers on his right hand had been broken, and his nose sat at a crooked angle.
Two of his teeth rested on the floor along with his ruined computer.
Not much had changed in the last hour or so. We were still in his apartment, sitting around the same table—Ryo’s hands strapped with zip ties behind him and a hulking mercenary standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder. I sat in another chair opposite him, staring like a safe cracker studying his next target.
Sighing, I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “This stopped being fun a long time ago, Ryo.”
“I can’t tell you anything else!” he cried out between swollen lips.
“You haven’t told me anything to begin with,” I said.
Ryo started to ask a question, but it trailed off into a whimper. He looked around as if searching for some means of salvation.
“I’ve told you so much,” he whined.
“Your sister already told me most of this crap,” I said, trying hard not to lose my cool.
Ryo tried again. “What about us buying fifteen percent of Halgen? That hasn’t even happened—”
“I can literally Google that shit and find a billion clips talking about it!”
“He didn’t tell you about Valegard,” Chloe said.
I looked over my shoulder at my bodyguard, who handed me her phone. There was an article about how Valegard was soon to be purchased by some shady corporation that already owned significant stock in three other large weapons manufacturers. It all sounded like tinfoil-hat nonsense, but I got the gist of what Chloe was suggesting. She probably had extra intel that linked this somehow to Tanaka.
Handing the device back to Chloe, I fixed Ryo with a glare. “Why didn’t you tell me about Valegard, Ryo?”
“Fuck! I didn’t know about—”
I jumped out of my seat. The thug holding Ryo knew me well enough to move back as I took two steps toward Ryo. I planted my foot into his chest and shoved, sending him sprawling to the floor. I couldn’t imagine how Ryo’s broken fingers felt, taking the brunt of the impact.
I shoved my foot on his chest and pressed down. “You’re next in line to take over from your dad, Ryo! Why don’t you know about Valegard!?”
Truth be told, I didn’t give a fuck about Valegard. It was probably technically legal and above board, just like everything else we had found out through Ryo. Hiro Tanaka was a skilled businessman and appeared to do a great job of maintaining the appearance of being a legitimate businessman.
Ryo screamed in pain. “I don’t know why!”
“Fuck!” I got off him and kicked his chair.
Chloe leveled her gaze at me. “This is pointless. He’s clearly useless.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “This has to be an act! There’s no way he’s this useless.”
Needing a distraction, I started to check my messages only to find zero notifications.
“You can’t do that in here,” Chloe said. “Your messages.”
I gave her a blank stare.
“This place is shielded from signals,” she clarified.
“You looked up that thing on Valegard.”
“One of the guys from Hannon sent me an email just before I got here. I already had it open.”
Glancing back down at my phone, a thought struck me. “Hey! Where’s this guy’s phone, uh…”
“Name’s Grant. It’s in his room,” said the man who had been standing behind him.
“And you’re sure that there’s no signal in here?”
“Yes, sir.” He smirked, proud of his own cleverness as he said, “I removed the SIM card just in case.”
It seemed that Psalter had chosen his men well.
“Bring it here,” I said, turning to look back at Ryo.
He simply stared back up at me, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes as his breathing came heavy and labored.
“Can’t find it!” Grant called from the bedroom.
“Where is it?” I asked Ryo.
Ryo’s sigh was punctuated by a hitch, and he closed his eyes. “The couch.”
“Check the couch!”
As we waited for Psalter’s man to return, I glanced at Chloe. “Did the guy tailing Sachiko ever get back to you?”
“He did,” Chloe said. “He lost them when her entourage split up. He didn’t tail the right one. It had that little companion of hers in it.”
“So, we don’t know where they’re staying?”
“Afraid not.” Chloe looked displeased.
“Got it,” Grant said, entering the room and offering me the phone. “It was in the couch cushions.”
The phone lit up as soon as I took it, showing the facial recognition system, which immediately started buzzing.
“It probably won’t recognize his face,” Grant said. He was right. Ryo looked like he’d been hit by traffic.
“Code?” I asked.
“What are you going to do?” Ryo asked.
“None of your goddamn business,” I snapped.
“It’s my phone!” Ryo insisted, sounding more like a petulant child than a man in his early adulthood.
I glanced at Chloe. “Cut off one of his balls and send it to his dad.”
Without hesitation, Chloe moved toward the little man, who instantly began screaming and trying to wiggle away from her. She drew a knife from her pocket and flicked open the blade.
Ryo screamed again. “No! Okay! It’s six-nine-four-five! Just don’t!”
I typed it in, and the phone unlocked. “Cool. It worked.”
“Hey!” Ryo screamed, and I looked up. Chloe was bent over him, reaching for Ryo’s pants.
“Whoa! What are you doing?”
Chloe paused and looked up at me. “You didn’t tell me to stop.”
“Jesus!” I said. “Stop! I don’t want to see that!”
My bodyguard straightened, folded her knife up, and slid it back in her pocket. As she returned to me, I eyed her.
“Would you have really cut it off?”
She met my gaze. “Order me again. Find out.”
“If this doesn’t give me anything, maybe I will.” I shot Ryo a dirty look before turning my attention back to his phone. “Did you guys go through this?”
“Yeah,” Grant said. “Everything was in Japanese at first. We got a tech guy who worked some special magic to flip everything to English. He downloaded all the emails, texts, and DMs. He’s going through them right now, I think. Pics aren’t very helpful. Just a bunch of women and anime titties. Nothing illegal we can use against him.”
“That checks out,” I snorted, navigating to his photos. Chloe was looking over my shoulder, and when I glanced at her, I caught her giving me a judgmental look.
“What?” I asked, innocently. “I’m just curious how much of a perv he is!”
It turned out that Ryo was one hell of a pervert. His files consisted of gigabytes of data—mostly a collection of folders and subfolders… each holding a category of dirty images and videos. His taste in erotic art was extensive, and I got lost scrolling through thumbnails of animated women in various states of undress and positions.
“This guy is meticulous with his porn,” I muttered, glancing up at Ryo. Grant had lifted his chair off the ground and set it upright. The younger Tanaka simply blinked up at me sullenly through swollen eyes. “Your organizational skills are actually impressive, man.”
When Ryo didn’t respond, Grant donkey punched him in the back of the head. “The man paid you a compliment.”
“Agh! Fuck!” Ryo cried out, trying to look over his shoulder at Grant, then at me. “Thank… thank you!”
The blow felt unnecessary, but not feeling very magnanimous, I didn’t make a thing of it. Instead, I went back to looking through the photos, scrolling through the real images this time—celebrities… porn stars… names I didn’t recognize…
“Holy shit!” I said, opening a folder labeled ‘Sister.’ Sure enough, there were images of Sachiko in various states of dress. There was a picture of her lying by a pool with sunglasses on in a black bikini, showing an interesting amount of cleavage just above crossed arms. Another one of her in a different bikini, lying back on her elbows, head tilted back, and looking at the camera. The third showed her in a pretty little dark green dress with shoulder straps and a swooping back, giving the viewer a smoky look from over her shoulder. Her lips were painted a dark shade, and her nails looked as if they had cost hundreds of dollars. All in all, there were two score or more of them… likely from social media.
“Well, this is interesting,” I said, showing Ryo an image of Sachiko lying on her bed and looking up at the camera, appearing as if she just woke up, but had likely spent twenty minutes prepping for that photo. “Got something you want to share with the class?”
Despite half his face splattered with his own blood, I could see a blush creep across his pockmarked cheeks.
“Does your sister know you feel a certain way about her?” I asked, backing out of the Sachiko folder.
He didn’t respond.
Truth be told, I couldn’t blame him. I noticed Sachiko’s beauty at the restaurant, but now that I’d seen these pics, I really began to understand how lovely she was. It sucked to be him.
Not that you really have a lot of room to talk, I thought to myself. There’s a certain someone you’ve looked a little too long at that you shouldn’t.
That wasn’t the same, though. I didn’t go around collecting sexy social media pictures like they were goddamn Pokémon cards.
Besides, Emily and I weren’t technically related.
“How about your dad?” I asked Ryo, deciding I’d much rather focus on him than me right now. “Does he know about this?”
And then that gave me another thought.
“Is Carla in here? I know you gotta have a crush on her.”
Still no answer.
Lo and behold, only a few folders down the line—‘Stepmother.’
Opening it, I found a treasure trove of Carla Tanaka pictures.
Jackpot.
These weren’t casual sexy bikini photos like Sachiko’s. These were explicit. In more than half of them, Carla was either nude or in some kind of lingerie. Many of them were of her spread out on a bed or slutting it out on a piece of living room furniture. Thank fuck none of them had that wrinkly old prune of a husband in them. That might have scared me for life.
“My god, Ryo,” I said, looking up at him. “There’s like… what? Two hundred? Three hundred here?”
Still, he remained silent, simply giving me his death glare. I could hear his heavy breathing through split lips in the eerie silence as we stared at each other.
I said as I turned my attention back to Carla’s images. “Did you know that we fucked? Not that I was really trying to or anything, but she…”
I blinked at one of the thumbnails of two women posing.
I opened the image.
I blinked again.
I backed out and started scrolling through them with much more scrutiny than before.
“What is it?” Chloe asked.
There was another…
And another…
I passed the phone to Chloe. “That fucking bitch.”
She took the phone from me and stared at the latest image.
I looked at Ryo. “Congrats. You get to keep both your balls. For now.”
Without another word, I turned and made my way toward the apartment door. “Good work, guys! Clean him up and get some band-aids, I guess.”
Opening the door, I stepped out into the hall and was surprised to see Erin sitting on the floor across from me. I stopped short, and Chloe, on my heels, nearly collided with me.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, stepping the rest of the way into the hall. Chloe shut the door behind her so that the three of us were in the hallway alone.
“You told us to wait in the hall,” Erin said, sliding up the wall till she was standing. “We waited for about thirty minutes, but I had some stuff to take care of, so Helen stuck around for me. I took over about ten minutes ago. She didn’t want to leave, but I convinced her you’d be okay with it. She said she needed to hit the little girl’s room and then called Karl and William to fill them in on the situation—felt like a good idea considering there’s a dead assassin involved.
I sighed. “Sorry… I forgot I told you guys that. I didn’t mean to have you just hang out here.”
Erin glanced from Chloe to me. “It’s fine, but are you okay? It’s been a little over an hour, and you still look like you want to murder someone.”
“I do want to murder someone. Look at this.” I handed Erin Ryo’s phone.
She took it and studied the image. “I…”
Then she slowly blinked, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Wait…”
She looked back up at me. “You’re not thinking…”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
“You can’t know for sure,” Chloe said.
“That’s why I want you to go to Carla’s apartment downstairs, wait for her to get home from work, then bring her to me,” I said.
Then to Erin. “I want you to find Helen and tell her to go get Bobbi.”
“Bobbi?” Erin asked.
“Yeah. I want her to see what happens when someone really pisses me off.”
“What are you going to do?” Chloe asked.
“Ask her some questions,” I said.
Chloe stared up at me for a long moment, and just when I thought she was about to protest, she finally said, “Alright.”
Erin handed the phone back to me. “Where do you want Helen to meet us?”
I glanced back down at the phone, staring long and hard as the three of us made our way toward the elevator. The image on the screen showed Carla holding a few shopping bags while wearing what appeared to be a skimpy dress made from scraps of designer fabric. Standing next to her with a couple of shopping bags and a smaller, closed-lip smile was Amber Bell.
And something Carla said when we first met rang through my memory:
I might start going if you’ll be there. It’s always filled with boring old men. Though, I have to admit, Chandler is fun. Amber, too, when she was on the board.
“Tell Helen that we’ll see her in the dungeon.”
***
Monday, September 16th, 5:49 pm
Chloe was waiting for Carla to get home. Helen was either working… or working Bobbi over in the dungeon.
Emily was with her acting troupe. Natashya was with her. Charity was at Julia’s office doing PR things. Emiko was packing for her trip to the Catskills the next day.
Apparently, Rose had left this morning while I was still at the hotel with Natalie and was now at work.
I wasn’t sure where the others were, but while Erin had been called away to a conference call with Charity and Julia, I found myself eating dinner alone.
That wasn’t a bad thing, exactly. It gave me time to stew over the possible implications of the pictures I found on Ryo’s phone, wondering what connection Carla might have with Amber Bell beyond VistaVision. The time stamps for those images spanned more than a year. The last one was less than a month before my grandfather’s death.
I sliced off a piece of pheasant and snatched it off the fork with my teeth, the juices setting my mouth ablaze with a burst of savory spices. It sent dopamine coursing through my brain, staving off tendrils of icy anger.
It was difficult to be too pissed off when food tasted this good. Whatever I was paying Camille… it wasn’t enough.
My chef surprised me this evening. I’d eaten by myself for the past half-hour, and every time I saw her, she’d done nothing more than give me a warm smile. There had been no overt flirtation… no brush of fingers against mine when she handed me my food. Had Emiko talked to her? Had I done something?
The hallway door on the other side of the room quietly opened, and my assistant slipped into the room. “Hey, boss. Heard from Chloe yet?”
I shook my head and took another bite of pheasant while Erin crossed the room and took the seat next to mine at the corner. She placed her elbows on the table next to an empty plate and folded her hands under her chin as she watched me eat.
“You okay?”
Preferring not to speak with my mouth full, I just nodded.
“Chloe told me that you guys messed Ryo up pretty badly,” Erin said softly.
I swallowed my food and said, “Could’ve been worse.”
The kitchen door opened, and Camille poked her head out. “Ah! Madam Malik. Would you like some dinner?”
“Yes, please,” Erin said, and Camille disappeared.
Erin looked back at me. “What happened, Marcus?”
“What do you mean?”
“That shooter didn’t get anywhere close to us,” Erin said. “You’ve been in worse situations. It just feels like…”
It looked like she was having a hard time saying it, so I finished her thought for her. “An overreaction?”
She apologized with her eyes.
I sighed. “I thought I was going to die four days ago, Erin. Ryo had a gun to my head. I’m probably still raw from that.”
I took a bite of candied Brussels sprouts and met her troubled gaze. “No… it’s more than that. If that guy had been close enough to get a shot off and hit you or Helen…”
The back of my throat began to sting, and I could taste something bitter. I didn’t want to cry in front of Erin, but fuck… the idea of something happening…
Again, the image of Charity bleeding out on the concrete came to mind. I remembered how I felt… how horrified I’d been, and I barely knew her. It was the same with Ray—the bodyguard who died on that rooftop. How much worse would that feel if it had actually been someone I was close to?
“Ray died, and I still feel guilty for that. I didn’t even know him that well.”
Erin reached out and placed her hand on top of mine, squeezing it.
“If something like that happened to you… I don’t think I could recover from that.”
Erin looked at me with those soulful dark eyes. “Oh, Marcus…”
“I need to end this thing with Hiro before something like that happens,” I said hurriedly before taking another bite, trying to do anything to keep Erin from seeing how close I was to tearing up.
“We will,” she said.
“I would have seriously considered giving Carla to Hiro if it meant protecting you before, but after this,” I jabbed my fork at Ryo’s phone, “I’d do it in a fucking heartbeat.”
“Don’t be too hasty,” Erin cautioned.
“I don’t care if he strings her up at this point,” I retorted.
“Neither do I,” Erin admitted, “But like Helen’s already said, Carla probably won’t be enough. Ryo and Carla probably won’t be enough.”
“He can have VistaVision if that’s what it takes to get him off our ass!”
Erin looked at me doubtfully. “He would own you if you did that, Marcus. You’ve got to draw blood with men like that.”
“So… what? You think I should get someone to kill him?”
Erin simply looked at me. It wasn’t a yes.
But it wasn’t a no, either.
I put down the fork, sat back in my seat, and sighed as my eyes rolled toward the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if I could do something like that. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in killing. Self-defense made sense, but telling someone to commit first-degree murder didn’t feel much like self-defense.
If it kept my people safe, though… it would be worth it, right?
I couldn’t help but smile as a thought crossed my mind. “You know what would piss me off? If that assassin guy had killed either one of us before we had our date.”
Erin broke into a wide grin. “There he is.”
That smile was like sunlight warming me to my core.
“So… a successful night with Natalie, huh?” She asked, propping her chin on her hand.
“We didn’t leave the room for over a day,” I admitted.
“I want the deets!” Erin said.
So, I filled her in—the date, the solo performance after… how she couldn’t keep her hands off me in the car. I told her about our first time having sex. Then the repeat performance. While I didn’t give her a blow-by-blow account, I provided her with a fairly detailed breakdown of how many times we fucked and what positions we did it in. I even told her about showing Natalie the picture Erin had sent of her, Helen, and Bobbi.
She stopped me when I mentioned sharing Astrid’s picture.
“Wait… Astrid sent you a pic!?”
“Oh shit… yeah. It was Saturday, but I didn’t see it till Sunday. Sorry… I didn’t think about sending it to you.”
“Gimme!” Erin said, holding out her hand like a toddler.
I opened the phone, pulled up the image, and gave it a glance.
Astrid lay stretched across blue silk sheets, arranged with the kind of precision that walked the line between seduction and artistry. Pale skin, almost luminous, stood in stark contrast to the dark fabric. One leg bent, the other extended… her pose effortless, but deliberate. Her breasts, small and uncovered save for a well-placed fold of silk, matched the rest of her frame—slight, graceful, and elegant. Hair like spun silver framed a face that was all angles and intent, eyes half-lidded and knowing.
The shot was tasteful, but only barely. That restraint made the image even more enticing.
“Fuck,” Erin breathed when I passed the phone to her. “Sending that to myself.”
“Yeah… I get it,” I said. “Just don’t forget… she’s fucking crazy.”
“Oh, I know, but I also understand the appeal. At least, looking at it won’t hurt. I certainly wouldn’t mind giving you a blowie while you stare at it.”
I snorted and took back my phone. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“So,” Erin said, suddenly looking a little bashful—it was hard to tell whether it was real or put-on. “I guess I owe you a date.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. Anything in particular you wanna do?”
I felt a foot next to my leg, on the corner of my chair. Erin gave it a little nudge and then pushed, slowly moving one side of my chair so that I sat at an angle next to the table. She slid out of her seat, giving me her most Erin-like grin, and then bit her lip as she slunk toward me.
First one knee, then the other… Erin straddled me as she slid her slender arms around my neck and settled into my lap. “Nuh-uh. I don’t want to choose.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my hands on her lower back, my fingers playing across the thin fabric of her shirt. I grinned up at her. “Oh really?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. If we’re doing an actual date, then I want you to plan it.”
“Maybe I’ll get Natalie to plan it for me.” I joked, “You planned a lot of ours.”
Erin’s nose scrunched cutely as she gave me a fake, infuriated frown and tugged at my hair. She started to say something when we both heard the door open, and Camille came into the dining room with a fresh plate for Erin. She slowed a little as she saw our state, and I didn’t miss the corner of her mouth quirk in amusement.
Thanks to Erin, I was no longer feeling as bad as I had ten minutes ago, and I felt the urge to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Camille’s behavior. Not only that, but I remembered Emiko’s advice: My recommendation is that you have a frank conversation with her… make sure you understand what she wants.
No better time than the present.
“Hey,” I said to Erin, gaining her attention. “Do me a favor and check on Chloe… see how much longer she’s going to be.”
“You sure?” Erin said, her gaze searching me for any trouble.
I smiled at her reassuringly. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. I just want to have a few words with Camille.”
Erin studied me a beat longer, then slid her arms from around my neck to cup my face in her hands. She leaned in and slid her tongue in my mouth. We exchanged tongues and saliva for a full ten seconds before breaking the kiss.
“Tell me about it later?” She asked in a whisper so faint that I barely heard it.
“Yeah,” I whispered back.
She gave me one more peck on the lips and then slid off of me with a fluid grace that only dancers like Rose and Natashya could have matched.
Erin made her way to the door, her fingers dragging along the length of the table’s dark wood as she locked gazes with Camille. She rounded the table and closed the distance between her and my chef, taking the plate. “I’ll take it to go. Thanks, Camille. It smells delicious.”
“Of course,” Camille replied in that light French lilt.
Erin gave me one last meaningful look and then left.
“Hey,” I said as soon as Erin had disappeared, “What’s your deal?”
“Deal?” Camille asked. That small, amused smile of hers deepened, and I recognized that sudden glint in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve been flirting with me hard since you got here. Especially that party the other night… right in front of William. Today, though, you’ve barely looked at me.”
Despite my brusque tone, she looked pleased. “I’m sorry… did you miss my flirting, monsieur?”
“That’s… uh… that’s not the point,” I said. “Why the change?”
She canted her head to one side, a few strands of her chestnut hair falling free from her loosely pinned updo. “You did not seem in the mood for flirting tonight.” Her sea-colored eyes rolled in the direction where Erin had disappeared. “Though I might have been incorrect.”
I ignored her little jab at Erin’s display of affection. “Why have you been flirting with me at all? Aren’t you engaged?”
The tip of her pink tongue played at the bottom of her lip as she stared at me, and I could feel a soft heat emanating from her, building with each passing second. “I am,” she finally said, “but it does not matter.”
I wasn’t stupid—I had a pretty good idea why it didn’t matter, but I wanted to hear it from her anyway. “Why not?”
“Because William is not a jealous man.”
“Ah,” I said. “Open relationship?
“You’re familiar with them, are you?”
Something about the way she asked it felt layered—on one hand, it sounded like a simple question, but on the other, I could have easily taken it as an accusation. After all, how many times had she seen other women share me? Of course there were relationships where men shared women.
I decided to take it as a non-judgmental accusation.
“He just lets you sleep with whoever you want?”
“He does.” Her tongue played across her bottom lip a bit more, and I could feel my libido responding.
No one in the world would have blamed me. Camille was stunning, even if she wasn’t going to do the catwalk at a Victoria’s Secret event.
She was on the curvier side—five and a half feet tall with an unmistakable hourglass figure, a pair of large double-D’s, child-bearing hips, and the frame to support them. It wasn’t the gymnast's physique that many of my women had. The best word I could think of to describe her was lush.
But besides the amazing tits and the killer ass, Camille’s face was absolutely stunning—especially her lips. They were plush… always seemed moist, and there was something stupidly hypnotic about their shape—especially the soft inward curve nestled at the center of her upper lip, like her mouth had paused for a whisper and never quite finished it.
No longer hungry, I pushed my seat away from the table and stood up. Camille watched me, suddenly looking like a woman observing a man who was capable of anything.
And she was a woman ready and willing for anything.
I slid Ryo’s phone in my pocket and took a few steps toward her, looking her up and down. Her chef’s uniform was double-breasted across her front, covering her completely to the neck, but it outlined her hourglass figure perfectly.
I stopped only two or three feet away from her, meeting her eyes and wondering what the fuck I should do.
Surely I had enough pussy already. There were at least half a dozen women who would climb into bed with me at a moment’s notice. If I asked, Erin would find me a new partner in no time.
Hell… I was waiting on a phone call from Chloe to tell me that she was taking Carla to the dungeon, where Helen and Bobbi were waiting, along with Erin. One of the most fit women I had ever seen; a hot blonde Barbie who used to be married to my enemy; a woman whose age granted experience, but who took so good care of herself that she looked several years younger than she actually was; a hot little tornado of sexual rage, and the most perfect woman I’d ever met.
Why would I need to fuck around with someone who seemed to be in a healthy relationship with a good man?
And yet… she was a hell of a beautiful woman who was clearly down for it.
Christ… what did she look like under that uniform?
My phone vibrated in my pocket, jarring me from my introspection, and I pulled it out to see who it was.
Hey, Chloe had texted, she just got home. Letting her freshen up a little, and I’ll bring her right up.
I texted back a thank you.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, looking back up at Camille.
If anything, the chef’s warm, flirtatious smile deepened a little. “Of course. You’re a busy man.”
And then she reached down, took my hand gingerly in hers, and lifted it to her lips, tenderly kissing the back of it. She laid another soft press against my knuckles. Then another against my second set of knuckles.
Then she slipped the tips of my middle and ring finger between those pouty, soft lips and oh so gently sucked on them. I didn’t feel her tongue—just warm, moist, silkiness that made my mouth dry.
She didn’t break eye contact the entire time, and I couldn’t look away.
Camile let my hand slip from her grasp and gave me a look that suggested she was the most innocent woman I’d ever laid eyes on. “If you ever want more than good food, monsieur… you know where to find me.”
And without another word, she left me alone.
I swallowed, only then realizing just how dry my throat actually was and then headed for the door. As I left, I brought my still-damp fingers to my nose and sniffed, picking up faint hints of her scent. She smelled… well… she smelled fucking amazing.
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