Lupi 08 - Death Magic

think about that. She didn’t know how to stop. It wasn’t as if she’d thought of safety as a constant—not since she was eight, anyway—but the dangers were so faceless and pervasive now that she—
    “I hated it.” Rule spun and stepped to her and gripped her arms, his eyes a dark blaze in his set face. “Do you understand? I hated keeping my word, keeping a secret from you, a place I couldn’t let you in. I don’t know how cops and Ruben and whoever else piles up such barricades of secrets can stand it.”
    She tilted her face up. His brows were drawn. His fingers clenched on her arm just below the wounded place, where muscle might grow back. Or not.
    He needed something from her. Words? She hoped not. She didn’t want words tonight. Words would open a gate to thinking and worry and fear, to the precipice gaping before them, a stony-toothed hole big enough to swallow a world, and her mind would skitter off to find means for a bridge, some way across or around or away from. And she’d do that, she had to, but not now. Now she slid her hands onto his shoulders, where cashmere slinked between his skin and hers. She went up on tiptoe.
    She didn’t kiss him. She bit his lower lip. Not hard, but hard enough. “Mine.” She nipped again. “Secrets and all, you’re mine. Don’t do it again.”
    He lifted both hands to her face and ran his thumbs along the underside of her jaw. “Yours,” he agreed, and touched the necklace he’d put around her throat earlier. “This. I want to see you in just this.” He cocked a brow. “Upstairs?”
    Yes.
    Halfway up, a stair creaked beneath her foot. Otherwise the house was silent. To her, anyway. What did he hear? Three steps from the top he put his hand on the small of her back. Her heart stuttered.
    “I’ll get the lights,” he said at the top of the stairs. Three were on, one in each bedroom. And the two downstairs, of course—parlor and kitchen—but they left those on all night. Security again. If anyone made it inside despite José and Craig, they’d show up great in the well-lit interior. Plus this gave them the option of suddenly shutting off the lights, blinding the intruder or intruders more thoroughly than it would Rule or the guards. If the guards had survived, that is.
    And she was sick to death of thinking about security and survival. While Rule turned off lights, Lily went straight to their room at the back of the house. She left that light on.
    “Catch up,” she said when he joined her, and popped the button on her jeans. The wooden floor was decorated with her shoes, sweater, and bra.
    He smiled and caught up—at lupi speed. Damn competitive man. She still wore her panties but he was entirely naked when he knelt in front of her, pressed his face to her belly . . . and blew raspberries.
    She looked down at him, astonished. He looked up, grinning.
    Oh, he wanted to play. She lifted her eyebrows. “Don’t get full of yourself. I know your weak spots.”
    His hands slid up her thighs to her butt, clamped, and lifted—and sent her sailing onto the bed.
    She landed in a whomp of tangled limbs and laughter, rolled onto hands and knees, and beckoned him. Come on, big boy, I can take you . . .
    He dived onto the bed in a tackle that would have been far more effective if she’d been standing. And the tickle fight was on.
    She was horribly ticklish on her sides at the waist. He knew it, damn him. He had two main points of vulnerability: his belly and his underarms. The belly was an iffy target because he could banish tickles by tightening his abs. Armpits, though—they worked every time, if she could get to them.
    There was only one rule: no pinning. Otherwise the battle would be over too quickly; he could pin her about nine times oftener than she could him. She was agile, she was ruthless, but she was not lupus. So Lily was indignant when, with most of the covers on the floor and both of them breathless from involuntary laughter, he flipped her onto her back and held her down with the length of his body. “Hey!”
    “I submit.” His breath came fast. He was grinning in the way that melted her, open and happy. She didn’t see it often enough. “I submit, I submit. You won.”
    “You’re throwing the match.”
    “Oh, yes,” he breathed, and lowered his face to her shoulder. This time he just inhaled, deep and luxurious. The inhale was to fill up on her scent, she knew. The exhale was her name, just that, warm and moist against her skin.