CHAPTER SIXTEEN #3
She set her bowl down and leaned her elbow against the back of the couch. He didn’t seem too rattled yet, so she kept pushing. “I ran into Sera today, and she had this weird notebook—”
Elias coughed, pitching forward as he choked on a noodle.
“Shit, are you okay?” Cadi asked.
Elias nodded and waved her off. “I’m good,” he gasped, pulling in a breath. Cadi chewed on her lip. That hadn’t exactly been the reaction she was expecting. She wanted answers, not to kill the man.
“Why this sudden curiosity?” he asked, turning to face her once he’d regained his composure.
Cadi thought for a moment, then decided that telling him she was worried he and Sera were somehow involved in a nefarious plot to bastardize the sigils of the god he once served was not the route to take.
“She just seemed really freaked out. I was worried. She kind of bit my head off about it actually, and now she isn’t returning my messages.”
Elias’s face softened, his hand coming up to take a curl between his fingers. “I’m sure it’s nothing. She’s been high-strung all week; I wouldn’t take it personally.”
Cadi leaned into his touch when his hand shifted to cup her cheek. She could almost forget that he hadn’t actually given her any solid answers.
Almost.
The idea of pressing him harder made her skin crawl.
She was so used to just letting things go, backing down at the first sign of resistance.
But that was before she had met people who made her feel safe enough to push.
And maybe nothing had ever quite mattered enough for her to really test that, but something told her that this did.
“That doesn’t really explain why she would have a notebook filled with sigils from the temple, though,” she said.
Elias let his hand drop, settling it against her knee, and he studied her for a moment with a strained expression.
When he opened his mouth, it felt like he wanted to tell her something, to give her any information to calm the spiral threatening to take hold of her thoughts.
But after a moment he closed it again, and a tight smile returned to his face as his thumb brushed against her leg.
“Sera is into that kind of stuff. I’m sure she was just curious, but—” He held up his hand to cut off the argument she had been about to make. “But I can talk to her about it if you want. Make sure everything is okay.”
Cadi considered his offer. There was no chance that she believed Sera’s hoard of sigils was mere curiosity, not with the way she had nearly jumped out of her skin when Cadi approached her.
But she could tell she wasn’t going to get anything out of Elias, either.
And she didn’t want to ruin their time together by being demanding.
She nodded, reaching forward for her bowl. “Okay.”
Elias smiled and leaned in to press a kiss to her temple. “Try not to worry about it, okay?”
She gave him a small smile and took a bite of her food, the savory flavors instantly reviving her appetite.
As it turns out, she had been hungry, and she managed to clean her bowl before Elias even finished his. Unfolding her legs, she stood from her seat and began to stretch out the stiffness that had settled in her knees from staying in that position for so long.
“What are you doing?” Elias asked, looking up at her.
She held up her bowl and had extended a hand for his. “Dishes.”
Elias shook his head. “I’ve got this one, you sit.”
Cadi rested her hand against her hip. “You got the food, so I do the dishes. We established this.”
“No, we said whoever doesn’t cook does the dishes. Takeout was not included in the negotiations.”
Cadi sighed. Of all the things she had imagined them bickering over, the privilege of doing the dishes had not been one of them.
It was only because Elias had insisted on shooing her out of the kitchen every time she tried to help that she had felt the need to set some ground rules that would allow her more opportunity to contribute.
Who’d have thought he was almost as stubborn as she was?
“Well, I’m amending our previous discussion,” she said, flicking her fingers in demand. “Gimme.”
“You’re not gonna win this one,” he replied, a playful twinkle edging into his eyes.
She bent forward in defiance. “I will if I beat you to the kitchen and stake my claim.”
Elias bunched up his lips like he was pretending to think. “I see your point. You leave me no other option.”
She frowned at the suspicious lightness in his tone, and something told her she had just walked right into a trap of some sort.
“Sabotage.”
Cadi shrieked when Elias lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her legs, tackling her back down onto the couch.
Her empty bowl clattered to the ground, and Elias made his move.
Launching himself from the couch, he scooped up the stoneware and darted away into the kitchen, laughing victoriously.
“Bad form!” Cadi yelled as she scrambled to her feet to chase after him. He was already standing at the sink reaching for the sponge by the time Cadi made it to the kitchen. She dashed forward and tried to pull him back, but he was bigger than her, and his body barely shifted from her attempts.
Deciding to use their size difference to her advantage, Cadi tried another approach. She pressed herself against the counter and wiggled in front of him to claim some dishes for herself, then pushed him backward with a calculated booty bump.
Elias chuckled in her ear. The sound sent a thrill across her skin, but she refused to let it show. This was war.
“You know, I’m amenable to this compromise,” he murmured as he stepped forward again to continue scrubbing, his arms framing her body.
Cadi had to admit she wasn’t wholly opposed to it either, but she couldn’t let him off that easily.
She flicked her fingers over her shoulder, sending soapy water flying at his face.
Elias sputtered, then leaned forward to wipe the suds against her t-shirt.
“Hey!” she cried, trying to squirm away, but quickly realized she had thoroughly trapped herself between his body and the sink.
“You started it,” he teased, nuzzling her neck.
Cadi’s eyes fluttered closed when the tip of his nose was replaced by his lips, which moved up to her ear and nibbled gently against her earlobe as his hands slipped beneath her t-shirt to slide across her stomach.
“You’re making this very difficult, you know,” she breathed, barely able to focus on cleaning the last fork.
“Mmm, am I?”
She nodded, and let the sponge fall from her hand into the now-empty sink. Elias leaned forward, his body pressing against hers as he turned off the faucet.
Cadi let her head fall back against his chest and reached up to cup the back of his neck. His mouth skimmed along her jaw, barely touching her, teasing her with the promise of a kiss before he spun her around.
She looked up at him. The playful glint in his eyes darkening was the only warning she got before his carefully constructed resolve cracked.
There was no time for her to react when he gripped the backs of her thighs and boosted her up onto the counter. His lips crashed into hers, his strong hands cupping her face to tip her head back.
Cadi angled her hips forward, pressing herself against him and leaving no question as to what was on her mind.
It had been over a month since they’d started dating, and she didn’t just want him—she needed him.
Elias sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers fisting in her hair but instead of letting himself go like she so desperately wanted him to, he stopped.
“It’s getting late,” he whispered against her.
Cadi wrapped her legs around his waist and hooked her ankles behind his back to lock him in place. In the past, it had always been her hitting the brakes, doing what she could to draw things out in the hope that maybe if she waited, they would stick around.
But with Elias …
Gods, if she had her way, he would take her right there in the kitchen.
“Stay,” she said.
She felt him smile, then shake his head.
“Not tonight,” he said, kissing the underside of her jaw. “If I stay …”
Her neck.
“You won’t be sleeping.”
Her lips.
“And I’m trying very, very hard to be good.”
Fucking hell, this man. She was beginning to think he really was trying to kill her.
“Fine,” she groaned.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled his mouth back to hers and let him guide her down off the counter. She walked him to the door, where he turned back at the threshold and leaned in to give her one more kiss that left her breathless.
The sound of a throat being cleared over his shoulder pulled their attention to the hall, where Cadi’s neighbor was standing in front of her door, a single eyebrow raised.
Elias muttered a halfhearted apology, then turned back to Cadi with a roguish grin.
“Good night,” he said, pressing his lips to her forehead and stepping into the corridor.
“Night,” she replied as she leaned against the doorway to watch him until he disappeared into the stairwell.
“Like I said, dear,” her neighbor commented, “there are worse things in life.”
The woman winked at her before stepping into her apartment, leaving Cadi alone in the hall, grinning like a damn fool.