16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
I would regret this.
It was two a.m. when I texted him. The fights he’d been so irritated by were probably finished by now.
Are you awake?
He texted back right away, as if he’d been waiting for me to reach out, which only strengthened the ball of nerves curdling in my stomach.
Rook: I just got home. Why are you awake?
Can’t sleep.
My thumb hovered over the phone.
We should meet to discuss the killer.
Rook: Now?
This was stupid. It could wait until tomorrow. But the anxiety roiling around in me would choke me before then.
Did you have something else on your agenda in the middle of the night?
Rook: You mean the time of night no one can see me sneak into your building to take your clothes off? ;-)
This is a business meeting.
Rook: Then meet with me during business hours.
He was right. I’d just forget this and try to sleep, except another message came through.
Rook: Tell me you miss me and I’ll leave right now.
I stared at the screen, unblinking, until my eyes burned.
Rook: I can be there in twenty minutes. Say it, England.
Bloody hell. He got off on tormenting me. I was sure of it.
And I let him win.
I miss you.
Rook: See you soon.
I waited fifteen minutes in complete panic, wondering if I should call him back and tell him I changed my mind.
Sweat bloomed over my body, and I paced the length of the room.
Five minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
He must have used the back way through the parking garage where I brought him up the last time, avoiding the door man.
I hated that he looked so handsome in those ratty black sweatpants and a t-shirt that was so beaten there were holes at the hem. For all the money he claimed to have, he dressed like he only owned one set of clothes and they’d seen much better days.
“Hello,” I said stupidly.
He ran a hand through hair that was already mussed, as if he’d tousled it several times before, or had already been in bed for the night when I texted him.
He kicked the door closed with his heel, took two steps toward me, and pulled me in for a kiss that made my numb brain short circuit even further. He licked the seam of my lips, his tongue warm and wet, but pulled back just as soon as I parted my lips and invited him in.
“Hello,” he said. His eyes sparkled.
“Come in,” I said, the offer even more ridiculous than my greeting, since he was already inside. “Can I make you a cup of tea?”
He burst out laughing, so hard he doubled over. “Tea? It’s the middle of the night, and we both know this is a booty call, so you can skip the gracious host bullshit.”
“It’s not—”
“Yes, it is.” He kissed me again, his hand curling around my shoulder.
I stepped closer, my lips latched to his, until our fronts pressed together and I could feel the hard length of his cock pushing against those sweatpants that hid nothing.
Emboldened by his reaction to me, I slid a hand past the elastic and pumped him several times.
He thickened more under the attention of my fingers, a temptation swelling at my touch.
I wandered lower, cupping his balls and massaging them with my thumb.
He moaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating against my tongue.
“I’ll let you take off your pretty clothes this time,” he said against my lips. “I wouldn’t want to wrinkle them again.”
“Are you always this snarky?” I asked without releasing him from my grasp. When I stroked my thumb just beneath the head of his dick, he hissed and his eyes fell closed.
“No, I save that for you,” he whispered.
“Come with me.” I finally let go of him to lead him into my bedroom, where he hovered in the doorway. “What are you waiting for?”
He nodded to the clothes he’d just teased me about.
I had thrown my shirt and pants back on before he arrived.
Rook’s eyes burned into my back as I untucked my shirt, slid each button from its hole, and draped it carefully over the chair in the corner.
My pants were next, and when I bared my backside to him, he made a noise of appreciation.
Naked, my cock straining, I turned toward him and found that he’d already removed his own clothes and stood stroking himself, his breaths loud and heavy.
“Come here,” I said, beckoning him toward me.
I sat on the edge of the bed and spread my legs.
He knelt between them and kissed the inside of each of my thighs, his eyes burning as they refused to leave mine.
At the sight of him on his knees for me, my head fogged, any coherence I had left floating away like clouds.
Luckily, it seemed Rook wasn’t here for conversation or witty banter tonight.
He licked the length of my cock and swirled his tongue over the slit, his fingers gripping me just below the head.
When the sensation of his hand moving became too much, I held his shoulder and urged him onto the bed so that we were lying on our sides facing each other. I reached for him at the same time I grasped myself, stroking our cocks together until he made the most delicious little whimper.
Rook. The fighter. The hardass I’d seen in that cage. The one feared and respected enough to attempt to take the crown from me in this city’s underworld.
He whimpered.
“Not yet,” he said, and it almost sounded like begging; a plea for this not to end too soon.
I pulled him closer and the soft flesh of our cocks rubbed against one another.
I rolled my hips into his, testing the weight of their movement.
An image of myself buried deep in his ass flashed behind my eyes and my moan escaped despite my attempt to hold it in.
Fuck it. Let him know the effect he had on me.
I suspected he already did, and I was the one who invited him here.
His fingers closed around me, applying the right amount of pressure to coax another one of those moans, but when I studied his face, there was no cocky amusement anymore, just hunger and focus.
I touched him, testing pressure until I found the grip that wobbled that focus for a moment.
We pumped each other, pushing one another toward release, and the urge to hold his opposite hand swept over me.
I grabbed it, squeezing his knuckles between mine, holding on and noticing the roughness of his palm.
His mouth formed a startled little ‘o’ before he adjusted his grip so he held me like an anchor.
My chest squeezed in an unfamiliar way—a longing, a craving for him to stay longer than it took for me to milk him dry. And a stranger, deeper feeling, like a part of him breaking off and catching in my ribs—like he’d burrowed there and I couldn’t rid myself of him now.
He came first, blasting cum across my chest and the sheets between us, but he finished me just after. Both of us lay breathing loudly in the quiet, our hands still grasped and the mess between us of little concern to me.
He leaned across, and when he kissed me, it was with a softness I didn’t recognize. We didn’t shower together, but washed separately. I changed the sheets while he steamed up my bathroom and acknowledged that desire for him wedged firmly in my chest.
Clean and dried, we were closer when we found ourselves beneath my sheets. When I glanced over, Rook had one arm bent behind his head on my pillow.
“What are we doing?” I asked. We’d turned the lamps off and the room was dark enough for me to find the words to wonder aloud what the hell this was.
“We’re lying in your bed.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He rolled over, and I couldn’t see him well, but I could feel his gaze and the warmth of his breath gliding across my face.
“Why do we have to call it something? I’m still a fan of ‘allies with benefits’ though,” he laughed.
“Do you take anything seriously?”
“Not with you.” He shifted, and it moved the sheets around our legs. “It’s refreshing, actually. I don’t get to relax very often. Too many people want me dead. Do you ever let yourself have any fun?”
I tried to think of the last time I had fun or smiled or laughed when it wasn’t to impress someone or intimidate them.
I came up with nothing.
“I don’t even know anything about you,” I said, avoiding his question altogether.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t even know your real name. I assume it’s not ‘Rook.’”
The laugh he huffed ruffled my messy hair. “It’s Carter. Carter Cross.”
My eyebrows drew down, my face pinching. “That name is ridiculous. It sounds like a superhero.”
“Well, it’s the one my mother gave me. But I agree. I prefer ‘Rook.’ What about you, Austin? Do you have a last name or is this a Madonna situation?”
“Jones,” I grumbled. “About as bland as surnames come.”
“I like your chess set,” he said. I flinched when the weight of his fingertips fell on my hip and drew lazy lines up and down my skin. The motion loosened the tension in my stomach and I relaxed against the bed.
“My father gave it to me when I left school.” He meant the expensive set in the corner of the room opposite the armchair. The board and pieces were carved from amber, and I kept them dust-free and polished, despite not having played in a long time.
“I’ll play you sometime.”
I rolled toward him, but he didn’t withdraw his hand. It rested flat against my side instead. “You play chess?”
He chuckled, some of his cockiness leeching back into his voice. “Three time state champion.”
“Bullshit.”
“Not bullshit, and now you know something else about me, so you owe me one. Why all of this?”
He didn’t gesture at anything, didn’t explain. Did he mean whatever we were playing at? The luxurious penthouse?
“Why all of what?”
“The money, the power…is it something you inherited?”
“My family is still in Britain, and no, it wasn’t.
” I inhaled deeply, which encouraged him to move his hand higher until it rested on my chest. My heart thumped under his palm.
“I was searching for something. I traveled a lot. It led me here, and it was easier to keep looking with ‘all of this,’ so I stayed.”
“Did you find it?”
I left England when I was eighteen and traveled Europe for two years seeking information on Death before I ended up in America.
There was such a concentration of the supernatural in Ashbruck that I stayed, fighting my way to the top until I had access to everything I could want—books, information, connections, money, and warehouses full of objects that toed the line of legality, when it didn’t outright cross it.
Project Mori had panned out, though. I was so fucking close now.
“No, I’m still looking.”
“Whatever it is must be a bitch to find if you can’t do it with all of the resources you have.”
Oh yes, she was a bitch to find.
“The sun’s coming up,” I said. Rook was questioning, creeping toward something that wasn’t his to know. “You should go.”
He scooted across the pillows and kissed me, and this time it was tender—it broke a quiet I hadn’t realized had settled in me. When he rose from the bed, a chill spread over my skin. He flicked on a bedside lamp and I squinted against the sudden illumination.
I watched him dress, admiring his body, and tried to ignore the ache that pulsed in my chest at the loss of him.
“I’ll text you,” he said.
As soon as the door closed, the spirits started.
Ooo that was almost romantic.
You’re pouting. Do you miss him?
Did you see the size of his—
“Bunch of nosy Peeping Toms, the lot of you. Stay out of my bedroom when I’m busy.”
He does miss him.
Are you going to let him come over again?
“Maybe, if I ever get some privacy.”
You’re our only entertainment.
“Then go find someone and watch TV over their shoulder or something. I hear The Office is excellent.”
But you can hear us.
“Unfortunately. Now go find something else to do. I have to go to work.”
The sun was up, the strange moment that suspended itself around me and Rook had faded, and I had things to do.