“If this list is supposed to make you braver, you’re gonna be fucking Wonder Woman by the time we’re done.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes, but he could tell she was pleased. It oozed out of her like jam from a layer cake, and he was lapping the sweetness up, desperate for more.

“Also,” he added, “just to make it really clear: your fiancé was a fucking donkey cock for leaving you.”

He liked the way she laughed at that, not her usual, low chuckle, but a gasping, breathless giggle that she clearly hadn’t meant to show him. She pressed her hands to her plumped-up cheeks as if she could push the laughter back inside, but it didn’t work. She just kept going, and his grin grew wider and wider.

“Your friends were fucking useless and all,” he told her. “Load of twats, the lot of them.”

She pressed a hand to her chest, over the ridiculous, furry all-in-one thing she was wearing. “True,” she managed between giggles. “Very true. Although, I don’t know why I told you about that. It’s not the point. It’s incidental.”

Did she really believe that, when he could see her pain a mile off? When her eyes shuttered with sadness as she talked about the people who hadn’t stuck by her? His voice softened. “You should make new friends now. You shouldn’t be lonely.”

That wiped the smile off her face, though not from her eyes. She scowled at him, trying to look outraged. For some twisted reason, he liked it. “I don’t need new friends,” she said, “and I am not lonely.”

“You are,” he insisted, partly because it was true, mostly because he enjoyed pissing her off almost as much as he enjoyed making her laugh.

Stubborn as fuck, she shot back, “I am not.”

“You are.”

“Redford Morgan, I will throw you out of my flat.”

He grinned. “But I have a key.”

“Which you would never use without due cause,” she countered, “because you are a very good superintendent.”

There was that flash of dizzying sweetness, the one she kept teasing him with. The one that made his grin turn wicked and his voice dip low, even as his logical brain screamed that flirting was a shitty idea. “Oh yeah? How good?”

She blinked rapidly, and he could’ve sworn she was blushing. “Well, I … I don’t know,” she muttered awkwardly. “I don’t actually have much experience with superintendents.”

“So I’m your first. Good to know.”

She was definitely blushing now. “Red.”

“I’m just teasing you, Button.” He was, wasn’t he? Teasing her, and enjoying it way too much. “Don’t faint on me now.”

“Right,” she said dryly. “Excuse me while I swoon.”

She looked hot enough to, in that outfit. The fluffy, gray pajamas swallowed her whole, and even though she’d opened a window earlier, he could see a bead of sweat creeping down the line of her throat. His eyes followed that tiny drop’s path like he was a wolf and it was lunch. Now he’d noticed it, he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t drag his thoughts away. Couldn’t remember what, exactly, they’d been talking about—only that he’d made her blush and he’d enjoyed it.

The drop had reached the hollow between her collarbones now, exposed by her slightly lowered zipper. He wanted to lick it away.

Wait—no he didn’t. No. He. Didn’t.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes he did.

“Red?” she said, her voice a little bit shaky. But not the way it had been earlier. This time, it shook the way his muscles did when he was pushing it at the gym. Like she was aching with adrenaline.

“You should really take that off,” he said, his throat dry, his mouth moving like it belonged to someone else.

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She patted nervously at her hair. “Take what off?”

“Your clothes,” he said, because he was concerned for her health, obviously. “Whatever that thing is you’re wearing. You should take it off.”

 

Chloe replied, rather intelligently, “Eep.”

“You’re sweating,” Red went on, his gaze oddly fixated at the base of her throat. Probably staring in mild disgust at the aforementioned sweat.

For approximately the thousandth time that day, she cursed her numb-footed, sleepless night and all that it had led to. There he sat, devastatingly handsome, and she was sweating in a lemur outfit like a child who didn’t know how to dress herself.

She tangled her fingers in the fabric, scrabbled for the last scraps of her dignity, and said firmly, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.” His gaze moved from her throat to her face, studying her with a stomach-clenching intensity that made her blood shudder its way through her veins.

The way he watched her made Chloe feel so … present. Noticed. Touched, and not in the emotional way. Her skin tingled in anticipation of a contact that would never be made. She was suddenly, disturbingly conscious of the fact that she wore very little under this onesie. Very little, as in, he could rip down the zip and she’d be standing there in nothing but her knickers.

This odd attraction she felt toward him was getting out of hand. She kept hearing a feral edge to his voice that couldn’t possibly be there, felt a heat in his gaze that must be 100 percent her imagination. She tried to control her breathing and look innocent, as opposed to looking like the depraved mess she was. It didn’t work.

“Chloe?” Red nudged, his little frown returning. She wanted to smooth it out with her fingers.

“What?” she asked faintly.

Gigi appeared helpfully on her shoulder and said, “Don’t mumble, darling. Nice big voice. Repeat after me: ‘I want to ride you like a stallion.’”

Dani appeared on Chloe’s other shoulder and drawled, “Don’t forget to say, ‘Please.’”

A tiny, phantom Eve joined the fray and said, “Don’t listen to those two. Actions speak louder than words. Jump him.”

“You’re too hot,” Red said.

“I’m not.”

He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek. The contact sent a jagged shock of arousal through her. She didn’t mean to react, but her next inhale came rather sharply—so sharply she made a soft, hungry sound. And he noticed. Oops. After a pause, he caught her chin and turned her to face him, which was unfair, because staring straight ahead had been her only coping strategy. His gaze unraveled her expertly in approximately 2.3 seconds. She saw the precise moment that he realized she was a breathless, horny little demon with a ridiculous crush on him. His eyes widened slightly, as if she’d shocked him witless.

Then those spring-green irises heated, were slowly swallowed up by dark pupils. He sighed, almost shakily. He leaned closer and bent his head until his brow rested against her temple, skin on skin, technically chaste. And yet, it felt so reckless, so charged, so shockingly intimate. His hair was a curtain cutting the both of them off from reality, silk swinging softly against her cheek. The scent of him, warm and earthy and comforting, imprinted itself in her mind, forever associated with this moment. This trembling, achingly close moment when they breathed, deep and desperate, in sync.