Sinners & Starlight: Chapter Three
This confrontation is long overdue...and doesn't go quite the way either of them planned.
Elena blinked at him.
“I…I’m sorry?” She finally managed to squeak. And then, after another pause, her stare sharpened into a glare. “You must be out of your mind.”
That cold smile he’d threatened the other guys with suddenly brightened and widened and melted into something far more impish. Cade moved behind her, sat down on the couch, and spread his arms out over the back as if he owned the place.
“You heard me.”
Her heart pounded in her ears like the music above their heads. Louder, even.
Up until this point, she’d been laughing and joking with her “customers” over where they wanted to be glitzed and glittered, with every one of them happy to stand still while she worked her magic.
This guy, though?
The audacity to practically invite her to climb onto his lap!
Elena cast a subtle glance around to make sure they were still alone. He seemed to know Vic well enough to cover her new friend’s break, and Vic seemed to trust him enough to leave her alone with him.
Did she trust him?
Absolutely not.
Did she trust herself around him?
…Debatable.
Her hand kept stirring the glittery gel in the mixing bowl. She needed to act as if she felt confident and sure about this. Like she was a professional artist just working with another canvas and not at all the broad, naked chest of the man she’d been secretly fantasizing about ever since he vanished.
Because that’s what he was, right? Just another attractive playboy who only cared about himself and whatever illegal crap got him the most money.
“Do you need more space?” His question came out mocking yet gentle, like he knew the effect he had on her. Lord knew she didn’t have an effect on him. Without another word, he simply worked a few more buttons open and pulled his shirt aside.
Elena swallowed back an embarrassing whimper that suddenly formed in her throat.
She didn’t know what it was. Why his chest…those abs…in particular were making her mouth water. He definitely wasn’t the first—or only—man she’d encountered in the past few hours who looked like the gym was a second job with the way each muscle rippled with every tiny movement.
What was up with her tonight? Elena never drooled over men like this. She hardly glanced at a GQ magazine without blushing and quickly looking away.
Plus, she was mad at Cade.
He owed her an explanation.
And several grand.
Time to remind him.
“That’s perfect,” she murmured breathlessly instead. Before she mentally kicked herself. What?! “I mean, yeah, that’s enough space to work with.”
“Good.” He tilted his chin up the tiniest amount and relaxed into the couch. “I’m all yours.”
God, if only.
She moved carefully and slowly with the first stroke of the brush, opting to trace the sinew of his neck from his jawline down to his collar bone. Like so many guys she grew up with who wished they were “gangsta”, his skin was covered with designs that wrapped over his shoulders and gradually creeped up toward his chiseled jaw.
Unlike any of those guys, however, these weren’t roses or nude pinup girls. They weren’t even the stereotypical flames or tigers popular in the streets.
They were something different. Older. A lot like the runes she studied in school—like the ones she painted on his friend just a few moments ago.
Something in the back of her mind reminded her of how they glowed when he expressed a particular burst of fury. When he was beating the daylights out of a man with black eyes who’d attacked her.
Reason and logic, however, made her quickly shake those imaginings off so she could focus on what was real.
“Like the ink?”
Elena blushed. He caught her staring despite her attempts to focus on the glitter. “Yeah.”
Cade smirked. But it wasn’t mocking, which came as a relief. It seemed more like he was unsure of what to say next. She’d wager he’s never unsure of himself. Ever.
“We need to talk,” he blurted.
Four words that drop a large stone deep into the stomach of anyone who hears them. They made her hand waver and the brush dance a little haphazardly over his sternum.
Elena bit the corner of her lip hard enough to keep her from glancing up into his silver eyes. “Do we?” She replied with her own playful smirk.
If she didn’t know any better, she’d say his hands just gripped the back of that couch tighter. “I don’t like how we left it. How we left things.”
“We?” She dragged the brush down over one pectoral. Tried to remind herself via internal chanting to just stay calm, stay cool, don’t let his voice or his…his everything…make her forget he’s not worth giving an ounce of trust to. “As I recall, ‘we’ didn’t do anything. You left.”
The Adam’s apple in his neck bobbed when he swallowed. “That I did.”
She didn’t say anything more. Why even bother? Words existed for people who cared, people who used them to make promises and then keep them. Elena figured words just bounced right off Cade like quarters off his biceps.
Strong hands wrapped themselves around her hips before pulling her firmly onto his lap. She knew she should protest, push herself off, something. This was too familiar. Too intimate.
Too exactly what she wanted him to do.
“Elena.” He tipped her chin up with a finger and made her meet his silvery gaze. “I didn’t leave because I hate you, or anything like that.”
Hurt flashed in the depths of her eyes and reflected in his own. “Then why?”
Cade didn’t answer. He smoothed his hands along her waist and, much to both their surprise, she shifted and melted into him. Like he was mapping her body for his memory, or testing the waters for something they both wanted to happen.
Except she didn’t.
…Right?
Elena sat up straighter, clearing her throat. She didn’t slide off his lap, but his hands braced warmly on her thighs and prevented her from doing so anyway. “Do you want more?”
His mouth quirked into that wicked smirk she hated loving. “Absolutely.”
“I meant—I mean—the glitter,” she stammered, trying to mentally focus on literally anything but the way he anchored her to him.
Or the way those same hands were now rubbing her thighs. Slow, lazy…and like she belonged to him.
He glanced at the bowl in her hand. The brush in the other. Seemed to get a sudden idea. “Let me see that.”
She wasn’t sure if she handed him the brush as much as he plucked it from her fingers, his eyes glancing between hers and her neck. He dipped the brush into the gel, scraped the excess off on the rim like a practiced painter, and used his other hand to gently nudge the collar of her tunic top aside.
He’s not holding me anymore.
This was her cue to leave.
She could just slide off his lap and leave.
“Hold still.” Another order, this time rolling over her like a caress.
She wondered if shivering still counted as “holding still”.
The brush glided down the curve of her neck, cool and soft and surprisingly comforting. He painted a line along her collarbone, on one side and then the other. When her hair got in the way of his design, he lifted his free hand and gently pushed back the thick curtain over her shoulder.
Then wove those fingers into the base of her scalp.
She whimpered.
She actually freaking whimpered.
“That’s my girl,” he breathed. It’s like he knew exactly what he was doing to her—and he wanted it as much as she did. Like he could feel her whole body thrum with a need she didn’t even know she had until this exact moment. “If you’re going to be around us, you need to look like us.”
Elena had no clue what that meant. Not sure if she cared at that point either.
He continued to paint her, adding a few swirls to the tops of her breasts because of course she had to wear the softest, slinkiest top that’s way too easy for someone like him to tug down. The only relief from this heat he stoked within her was the coolness of the gel as it smeared and dried on her skin.
The only thing keeping her from moaning out loud was her sheer determination to not get fired.
From this gig or her whole dang career.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he suddenly said as if he could read her mind. “I can behave.”
She snorted. “You can?”
His smirk warmed against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Elena wasn’t entirely sure he needed to be that close to add more glitter. “When I want to.”
“Do you want to?”
Cade leaned back just enough to look her in the eyes. To show her the inferno of lust blazing in his. “Not particularly.”
This episode of Sinners & Starlight may be over, but the story has only begun.
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