Page 192 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
“Fine.” I lowered my head into the cloud of blankets. “Another comforter, my servant.”
His deliberately blank face drew a smile from me. He dropped another comforter on me.
I groaned into the clean laundry scent. “Remind me to never give up amazing blankets again.” Bye, bye, shitty quilt and your sleepless nights and endless holes. “Where did you get these?”
“Delilah had our supplier ship them over early.”
“Remind me to kiss her.”
He lowered himself beside me. “Or you can learn the way capitalism fucking works and reward the person who paid for them.”
I rolled onto him. The tips of our noses kissed, the faintest of touches.
Grinding myself against him, I whispered against his lips, “I hate capitalism. People exploit people, and there’s a reward for it.”
“Really?” Two hands dipped below my shirt and curved around my waist. “Seems like you’re good at it.” His fingertips brushed the undersides of my breasts. “Seems like you fucking love it.”
“Why did I avoid roommates my entire undergrad?” I traced my favorite scar, admiring the grooves. “This is amazing.”
“Roommates?” The pad of his thumb circled a nipple. “You’re not my fucking roommate, Tiger.”
“Yeah? What am I? Wait.” My nails dug into him as if it’d make him less likely to avoid the question. “Better question—do you think this is just lust?”
His jaw clenched, and I recognized the moment he withdrew from the conversation. From us. “You’re supposed to wait until you’re not sick to ask.”
“We made out yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.”
“Which probably means I’m sick, and now we have to wait until I’m not sick.”
I groaned and plopped onto my back. “What happened with my dad?” My eyes pleaded for another smile or, at the very least, a breadcrumb of what had transpired in Blithe Beach.
He avoided the question, a pro at this point. “They’re filling the pool tonight.”
I accepted the subject change with the reluctance of a starved toddler being fed something she hated. “No, thanks.”
“You have something against pools suddenly?”
“I'd rather christen it while it rains.”
“Of course, you would.”
I propped my head with my fist. “The end of the rain season is nearing.”
“I draw the pillow-talk line at discussing the fucking weather.”
“We haven’t fucked,” I drawled out the word, letting him know what I thought of our abstinence. “So technically, this isn’t pillow talk.”
He’d flipped the switch from scorching hot to lukewarm. It made no sense to me, and given the timing, intuition forced me to consider something had gone down between Dad and Nash. Whatever it was, I had to trust Nash wouldn’t keep something big from me.
We were beyond that.
“Let’s swim when it rains,” I suggested. “I want to be the first in the pool.”
Hopefully, on my birthday in two days.
Nash nodded his agreement and stood. He approached his desk, grabbed a box from the drawer, and handed it to me. “It’s the stuff for the phone screen.”
“Oh.”
