It had been a long time since he’d been in the house—not since the Chosen had taken up res, as a matter of fact. Then again, when Rehv had blown up ZeroSum, and ended his role as a drug kingpin, that debt between them had lost some of its repayment traction.
Besides, now that the guy didn’t have to make deliveries of rubies and sex to the princess anymore, there hadn’t been much reason to come north.
Apparently that had changed, however.
“Yo, Rehv, where you at?” Trez hollered, his voice booming.
As much as his stomach protested, he and his brother walked out into the main hall. Victorian ephemera was everywhere, from the garnet-colored Orientals on the floor, to the tapestry-covered benches, to the taxidermied bison, deer, moose, and bobcat heads mounted around the rough stone fireplace.
“Rehv!” he called out again.
Man, that racoon lamp had always given him the creeps. So did the stuffed owl with the sunglasses.
“He’ll be right down.”
Trez turned around at the female voice.
And in that one moment, had the course of his life change forever.
The staircase down from the second floor was a straight shot, the shallow steps and their simple railing emerging from above without architectural artifice.
The female in the white robe standing at their base turned them into a stairway from heaven. She was tall and slender, but her curves were in all the right places, her loose dress unable to conceal her high, large breasts or the graceful swell of her hips. Her skin was smooth and the color of café au lait, her hair dark and coiled up high on her head. Eyes were pale and heavily fringed.
Lips were full and rosy.
He wanted to kiss them.
Especially as they moved, enunciating whatever she was saying with intoxicating precision—
iAm’s sharp elbow in his rib cage made him jump. “Ow! What the fuck—frick, I mean. Shit—I mean, crap.”
Way to be calm, cool, and collected, asshole.
“She asked if we wanted any food,” iAm muttered. “I said, no, not for me. Now it’s your turn.”
Oh, he wanted to eat something, all right. He wanted to fall to his knees at her feet and get under that—
Trez closed his eyes and felt like a total flipping bastard. “Nah, I’m good.”
“I thought you said you were hungry.”
Trez popped his lids and glared at his brother. Was the guy trying to make him look like an idiot?
The knowing light in those black eyes suggested, yes, iAm was.
“No. I’m fine,” he ground out. Subtext: Don’t push it, douche.
“I was just going to check on my bread.”
Trez’s eyes shut again, the Chosen’s voice lilting in his ears, the sound of it both raising his blood pressure and calming him down at the same time.
“You know,” he heard himself say, “maybe I will see if I can scrounge up a meal.”
She smiled at him. “Follow me. I’m sure we can find something to your liking.”
As she headed around for the entryway they’d just come through, Trez blinked like the dumb-ass he was.
It had been a very, very long time since a female had spoken anything to him without a double entrendre…but as far as he could tell, those words, which could arguably be considered a come-on—at least given his lust filter—had held no promise of a blow job or some full-on sex. Or even attraction of any kind.
Naturally, this made him want her more.
His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him—
iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”
Trez’s first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother’s grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point,” iAm hissed.
Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. “I’m not going to…” Fuck her came to mind, but God, he couldn’t use the f-word around that female, even in the hypothetical. “You know, do anything.”
“You actually expect me to believe that.”
Trez’s eyes flipped over to the doorway she’d disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no credibility on the subject of abstinence.
“She is not available to you, do you understand me,” iAm gritted out. “That’s not fair to someone like her—more to the point, if you tap that, Phury is going to come after you with a black dagger. That is his, not yours.”
For a split second, Trez bristled at that—except not because his inner feminist was roaring about females being treated as property, although of course that was wrong. No, it was because…