Midnight Jewel
Page 59

   “Mirabel, what’s the matter with you?”
   “I figured you’d just act like it hadn’t happened. That’s how you are.” I kept my words calm and precise. “I didn’t expect you to be mad about it.”
   “Mad about what?” But something in his voice was just off enough to tell me he knew exactly what I meant.
   “Us kissing.”
   “Let’s be clear about one thing: You kissed me.”
   “I’m not in the mood for this game.” I put my hand on the knob. His grip on my shoulder tightened. I held my breath.
   “I’m not mad. It was quick thinking. A good distraction.”
   I closed my eyes. “Then why won’t you look at me? Why have you been trying to get rid of me?”
   Silence. Long silence. He shifted, so close now that our bodies touched. His hand dropped, resting lightly on the curve of my waist. “Because it was . . . because you are . . . ugh. You’re a distraction too.”
   As I opened my eyes, I realized I’d been wrong about his reaction to the kiss. Slowly, I turned, unable to avoid brushing against his body as I faced him. Our eyes locked, and the tension ramped up in what little space was left between us. Some of it was the usual exasperated kind, but the rest . . . was something more. Electric, I supposed. Electric but underscored with vulnerability.
   “I heard something else Silas said to you. A question. That you didn’t answer.” He went very still, so I pushed forward. “Do you want to sleep with me?” When he made no response, I added, “You told me you’d answer three questions.”
   “You’ve already gone past three.”
   I didn’t rise to the baiting. “Grant. Answer me.”
   “Silas would kill me.” His eyes drifted away again. “And if you—that is—I can’t risk messing this up. I told you, I need this case. And I need you on it.”
   His body language revealed a lot more than his evasive words did. He was nervous. Nervous because he hadn’t read me yet? Because he couldn’t read me?
   “You’re still not answering! All you’ve said was why you can’t. Not if you want to.”
   When he turned his gaze back on me, it was stormy, full of conflict and frustration. He leaned closer. “What do you think, Mirabel? Look at you! You’re . . . you. And I’m me. And I’m human.”
   I went liquid inside. The tension was almost smothering now. It hummed between our bodies. It pulled at us, like a thousand fine, invisible threads. I placed my palm on his chest. “And you don’t think I am?” I asked.
   I slid my hand upward, and he stopped it with his own. “I think you have other things to worry about.” He paused. “And I’m pretty sure you’ve actually said you don’t like me.”
   When I tried to move my hand again, he pushed it away, pinning it against the door. And as he held it—and me—there, he banished the last fleeting space between us. There was nowhere else for me to go and nowhere I wanted to go. Something was coiled up in my chest, something tight and ready to burst.
   “I don’t need to like you,” I said.
   His fingers tightened on my wrist, and our mouths met, frantic and greedy. His other hand returned to my waist, and then a last attempt at caution tugged at him.
   “Aiana will kill me too,” he said. It wasn’t clear who he was making the argument to.
   “You think I’m a distraction? You’ve been a bigger distraction. Since the day I saw you on that ship.” I barely recognized my own voice. “I don’t need to marry you, Grant, but I need to get you out of my system. I need to get this done with so that I can worry about other things.”
   He held me—us—there, suspended on a razor’s edge as he searched my face for some answer. At last, he must have found it, because he said, “There’s no way I’ve been the bigger distraction.”
   And then his lips were on my neck, my cheek, and then back to my mouth, as hungry and demanding as before. We stumbled away from the door and ended up on the floor again, his body over mine. My hands slid under his shirt, and I didn’t even realize I was digging my nails into his back until he gave a small grunt of surprise and pulled away. The weight of his gaze pinned me as much as the rest of him. I recognized the familiar, obsessive look. Only this time, it wasn’t a clue he wanted to unravel.
   His hands and lips moved almost everywhere on me, and in the places they didn’t, I guided him there myself. I felt drunk, intoxicated both by what he did to me and the effect I had on him. This was Grant stripped of his cynicism and careful calculation. This was Grant unrestrained, his vigilant nature temporarily blinded by instinct.
   I fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, and he took over, shrugging his way out of it. He was much more adept at undoing my buttons, not even needing to look at them as he trailed feather-light kisses along my neck. When he finished with my buttons, he spread the shirt open, his expression eager and expectant. What he found made him pause. “Really?” he asked.
   The shirt’s thin material showed a little more of me than I liked in certain lighting, so tonight I’d taken the time to put on a jump, a flexible quilted corset with no boning but plenty of laces.
   Despite my ragged breathing, I managed to ask, “Would it help if I just gave you my knife?”
   He shot me a dry look at that and then started in on the laces with his clever fingers, working his way down as easily as he had with the buttons. Each time he freed a cluster of laces, he’d push the jump open a little more and then continue unwrapping me. I trembled at the newness of it all, of baring myself like this. But that anxiety was fleeting, quashed by an overwhelming eagerness to seize what would happen next.
   He’d almost reached the jump’s bottom edge, near the waist of my pants, and I ran my hands over his arms, tracing the shape of his muscles. My fingers grazed a spot just below his shoulder where the skin felt rough and uneven. The patch was round, about the size of my fist, and when I lifted my head for a better look, I saw that it was scar, deeper and clearly more traumatic than the little ones I’d already noticed scattered over him.