Page 100 of The Shadows Between Us
“Good. Now laugh like I just said something naughty.”
His words catch me off guard, but I let my eyes drift down to half-hooded before giving him a short laugh filled with promise. I slap his shoulder playfully for good measure.
“Remes, your turn again.”
Kallias takes less than five seconds to look at his cards and throw down a new one.
“It’s like you’re not even trying,” the man across the table says, before throwing down his own card. The other three people groan as he sweeps the pile of money toward himself. “If it’s the lady distracting you, then she has my deepest thanks.”
“Just deal another hand,” Kallias says. He lets the hand on my abdomen drift up to my side, before letting a gloved finger trail down my bare arm.
I wonder if the men across the table can see the goose bumps rising on my flesh as clearly as I can.
For gods’ sake, it’s only his glove. I shouldn’t be turning into a liquid heap.
But, as if he’s found a new game he likes far better, Kallias doesn’t glance at his cards. His gaze holds mine as he lets his fingers trail up the side of my neck, across my collarbone, a little lower. Watching my face for any reaction at all. As if he’s asking a question and waiting for my expression to tell him the answer.
And damn him, but my breathing hitches, the muscles in my legs tightening. His answering smile is that of a predator, masculine pride at its finest.
Oh, but two can play at that game.
I sit a little higher up on his lap, let one hand travel up his chest from lower abdomen to his shoulder, letting my fingers reach under his waistcoat, so there’s less fabric between our skin.
A low sound comes out of Kallias’s throat. He tries to hide it behind a cough.
“Just take her upstairs and get a room already,” another man at the table says.
“No!” the first one shouts back. “She’s our ticket to winning everything in his wallet.”
Kallias reaches for the new hand of cards, but I beat him to it, grabbing the deck and holding them up where he can also see. I let my head rest back in the space between his neck and shoulder, my wig protecting us from any contact.
But with my free hand, I grip the side of his thigh and squeeze.
He pitches forward slightly, his chest barreling into my back. But then I realize it was no doing of mine.
“Sorry!” a girl with a fresh tray of ale says. She rights herself frombehind Kallias, only having spilt a little bit of the dark liquid down the sides of the cups before moving on.
She’s wearing my rose in her hair, I note. I wonder when Kallias gave it to her. And how he convinced her to wear it. Now that she’s in the room with us, Kallias tries to be subtle as he follows her every movement. Waiting to see if our contact—whomever he or she might be—will approach her.
I turn toward Kallias again. “Did you touch me?” I whisper, worried that the klutz pushed us too close together.
For some reason, Kallias doesn’t seem worried. He holds a gloved finger under the table. I watch as a swirl of shadow appears around it.
“No,” he says.
The fear receding, I breathe onto his neck as I say, “Oh, good.”
And, as if that breath of air were too much, he scoots me down his lap a bit toward his knees.
“Are you going to go or what?” the irritated man to our left asks.
“I think I’m done,” Kallias says, his voice deeper than it was a moment ago. With one arm slung around my waist, he stands and leads me toward the edge of the room. He steps past a partitioned-off area, where cushioned seats line against the wall. He gently sets me down before sitting beside me, our legs just touching.
“I’d hoped to blend into the room, but it’s too hard to watch our girl,” he says. “We have a better vantage point here.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here. We stand out too much. You don’t take a whore to the cushions just to talk to her.”
He reaches down, grabs my legs, and throws them over his lap. One hand goes under my skirts to trace against my calves.
