32. Addie
ADDIE
DUNCAN LA BARRE – KISS ME
In the end, it wasn’t rational thought that separated us, or the fact that I was due for another round of nanotech, but the distinct masculine ahem of somebody clearing his throat.
“I take it you approve of the red gown, Agent Beckett?” Stanley drawled, standing mere feet away from the still-very-open dressing room curtains.
He crossed his arms, fighting back an amused grin, while Pyotr—seated on the grey couch behind him who I’d completely forgotten even existed—held no such reservations.
His pink hair now matched his face, and no amount of hand-fanning was working to cool him down.
“G’s gonna love this little facet of information.” He smirked, whipping out his latest model iPhone, snapping a quick photo of Beck and me entwined in red fabric and lust, and tapping several buttons.
“Don’t you dare,” Beck growled, still notably tangled in my hair, my dress, my… legs?
When did they get up there?
I blushed, dropping them—or trying to. Beck’s fingers flexed possessively on my upper left thigh, keeping me tucked tightly against him, locked between his hips and the dressing room mirror. Like a caveman. And strangely, the ownership of his gaze, his hands, didn’t bother me in the least.
My core clenched, the friction achingly delicious against it, and a tiny moan escaped me.
His face snapped back to mine, his eyes dropping to my lips like they could capture the sound, bottle it, devour it whenever he liked.
Of course, he could always just do this whenever he liked, instead.
I was very vehemently unopposed to this.
“I may have already texted her,” Pyotr sang, entirely unapologetic.
“He definitely did—and I fucking knew it,” Gina purred from the doorway. She prowled over to the sofa, sinking gracefully into the cushions beside Pyotr, looking for all the world like they were a bucket of popcorn short of a show.
Eye-fucking the both of us, she murmured, “Should have brought the popcorn,” reiterating my thought aloud so immediately that I snorted.
The bulge in Beck’s pants twitched at the sound, inciting another illicit moan—and another stolen kiss.
“Please stop making those sounds, Adelaide,” he whispered, pressing a tiny kiss to the side of my neck. “Or we’ll never leave this room.”
“Maybe I don’t want to,” I whispered back.
“Louder for those of us in the back!” Pyotr called.
“Yeah, exhibitionism is hot!” Gina hollered. “We need some fresh material for later!”
Beck and I both held out—until Stanley loosed a soul-withering sigh. Then, we were done for.
Laughing, Beck set me back down, but he couldn’t let go completely. His hand slid into mine, refusing to budge, not even when Stanley asked for the gown back.
“I need to press it now that you’ve got wrinkles all through the satin,” he complained, though I wasn’t entirely sure how serious he was given the awfully-hidden smiles tucked behind his faux-irritation.
“I must say, Pyotr,” Gina began, “what excellent work you do. Addie’s makeup hasn’t budged an inch.”
Pyotr immediately did an impression of a peacock—preening and wiggling his torso with glee. “Told you I’m a genius.” He waggled his brows at the two of us, evidently not even pretending to give us the illusion of privacy while I undressed.
Oh well. I’m not exactly his preferred meal anyway, I thought, wiggling out of the gown Beck had the forethought to unzip for me.
Beck, on the other hand, looked like he could devour me in one bite.
Hell, given the stature of the man—and the gleam in his eye—he probably could.
I dressed as quickly as I could, my left hand immediately snatched back up by the—okay, not ogreish at all—Beckett, who barely spared the curious trio a look on our way out.
Stanley stood by the hallway with a handful of couture-labelled bags balanced on his outstretched index finger. His face was already firmly back to that no-nonsense, almost bored expression.
Beck grabbed the bags without a word, his eyes fully occupied elsewhere, stuck on whatever emotion my open-book face was allowing him to read.
“Thank you, Stanley,” I said pointedly.
“Yes. Thank you, Stanley,” Beck repeated, deigning to spare the man a look, after all. “When you send the gown upstairs, make sure to include those six-inch Louboutins I saw by the door.”
Stanley smirked. “Yes, Sir.”
Beck’s hand twitched in my grip, and I wondered if I’d just discovered which of the two possessed the kink Dek had alluded to earlier.
I decided to take the lead, dragging Beck down the hallway with a tossed wave over my shoulder to the others.
“See you next week, Agent Sinclair,” Pyotr drawled.
“We’ll be the ones with all the hardware!” Gina added with a giggle.
I refused to acknowledge what those particular words meant. I much preferred to live in my tiny bubble of denial, just for one night longer, because my bubble currently included a man I’d once detested. A man I’d now de-tasted. And a man I was starting to believe might be my undoing after all.
But he was a man who lived with two other men who had also wriggled their way beneath my skin.
Oh, what was a girl to do?