CHAPTER 7
The Watchman
Marcus went still at Daniel's words, and for the first time the guard looked less certain of the room than the husband. That pleased Daniel in a dark, trembling way.
"Rules shouldn't change because the heat of the moment says so," Marcus said.
Elise gave a breathless laugh. "You're very inconveniently honorable."
"Only inconvenient if honor isn't what you want."
Daniel moved to the bar and gripped the edge. The polished stone was cool beneath his palms. "What I want keeps changing."
"Then slow down," Marcus said. "Name it before you chase it."
That was the difference between fantasy and reality, Daniel realized. Fantasy obeyed silently. Reality asked questions in a man's low voice and waited for answers he did not know how to give.
Elise came to stand beside him. Her lips were still flushed. Her hand brushed his back, careful and loving. "We don't have to do anything else."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He turned. The concern in her face cut through the fever. She wanted this. He could see that now without punishing her for it. But she wanted him intact too. Not discarded. Not mocked. Not left behind.
"I know," he said again. "That's why I can breathe."
Marcus remained by the fireplace, giving them room. The sight of him there, tall and waiting, intensified everything. He was the temptation and the boundary both.
Daniel looked at his wife. "When he kissed you, you looked... awake."
Elise's eyes glistened. "I felt seen."
"By him."
"Yes." She touched Daniel's face. "And by you. Maybe for the first time in a long time."
The honesty hurt less now. Or maybe Daniel was learning to let it hurt without turning away.
He looked at Marcus. "If I said she could kiss you again, what would you do differently?"
Marcus's jaw tightened. "I'd ask what she wants."
Daniel nodded. "Elise?"
She turned toward Marcus, no longer pretending not to want. "I want to know what it's like when you stop holding back a little. Not all the way. Just... enough."
The words filled the room with velvet heat.
Marcus approached, slower this time. Daniel did not step away. Elise remained close enough that her shoulder brushed her husband's chest as Marcus stopped in front of her.
"Enough can be dangerous," Marcus said.
"So can starving," Elise whispered.
Daniel closed his eyes for half a second.
Marcus lifted Elise's hand and kissed her knuckles first, unexpectedly formal. Then her wrist. The tenderness of it made her breath catch. He did not rush to her mouth. He made her wait, and in making her wait, made Daniel watch.
Daniel realized then that Marcus was not only kissing Elise. He was showing Daniel how attention could be given like a discipline. Every pause asked. Every touch listened. Every glance returned to Daniel without apology, making him part of the circuit instead of a man outside the window.
When Marcus finally kissed Elise again, it was deeper.
Elise turned into him with a soft surrender that made Daniel grip the bar until his knuckles whitened. Marcus's hand settled at the small of her back. Elise's fingers slid up to his shoulder. The kiss lengthened, warmed, changed. Not frantic. Worse. Confident.
Daniel watched his wife's face as Marcus broke away to kiss the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, then just below her ear. Elise shivered.
"There," Marcus murmured, not quite to her and not quite to Daniel. "That's where she hides the sound."
Elise made that sound again, proving him right.
Daniel's breath left him.
Marcus lifted his head. "Still with us?"
The question was for Daniel.
It should have embarrassed him. It steadied him instead.
"Yes," Daniel said.
Elise reached back blindly until her hand found his. Daniel took it. The three of them became linked in a way too strange and intimate for words.
Marcus kissed her neck once more, then stopped. His restraint was no longer effortless. Daniel could see the strain in his shoulders, the heat in his eyes. Elise saw it too, and her expression changed with the knowledge that she had done that to him.
Daniel had not expected pride.
It arrived anyway.
That is my wife, he thought, and the possessiveness did not contradict the sight of Marcus's mouth near her skin. It sharpened it.
The radio crackled again, but the words dissolved in static.
Marcus stepped back to answer. "Hale. Say again."
Static. Then a voice: "Reset still cycling. Stand by."
Elise laughed softly, nerves and desire braided together. "The universe is very committed."
Daniel looked at the locked lounge door. "Maybe it's not the universe."
Marcus lowered the radio. "What does that mean?"
Daniel surprised himself by smiling.
"Maybe tonight has a watchman."