‘I want to try it out,’ she heard Tatum declare breathily.
She detected the faintest terse exhale from Eden. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘Better still…’ she said, her voice lowering further. There was a moment’s pause as if something else was simultaneously happening between them.
Her stomach wrenched, visions of them together hitting her hard and fast and leaving an acrid taste in her mouth.
‘…I want to watch you in action. Further down the row. I’ll sort it out. Get it all set up.’ She became barely audible, forcing Jessie to lean closer. ‘Find you a couple of women…’
There was silence.
‘What?’ Tatum’s tone was curt. Harsh even.
‘Maybe another time,’ Eden said.
‘Did you just push me away?’
‘I said, maybe another time. I’m tired.’
Her heart skipped a beat, relief washing over her. For a moment, just a moment, she allowed herself to believe there was an alternative motive behind his rejection.
‘Tired?’ Incredulousness spiked Tatum’s pitch.
‘Yes, tired. I’ve spent all day getting Pummel’s stuff. I haven’t slept since I got here. I’m tired. So let’s take a rain check.’
‘I’ve just offered you potentially the best fucking time of your life. Literally.’
This time Eden’s terse exhale was louder. ‘Oh, darling, you really do rate yourself, don’t you?’
Jessie’s jaw dropped. Tatum’s gasp was audible. The silence was excruciating. Her hand gripped the spindle again.
‘Do you know how lucky you are that I picked you?’ Tatum asked curtly.
‘Right now I feel about as lucky as having a wasp pick my sandwich at a picnic.’
Jessie clamped her hand over her mouth. She almost smiled had the cutting remark not filled her with a sense of dread.
The indignation in Tatum’s tone was impossible to miss. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘I thought I did – someone who gets this. Someone who likes to fuck as much as I do with as few strings as possible. So what’s with the leash, Tatum?’ Eden asked, his tone impressively calm. ‘Because I sure as fuck didn’t have you down as the clingy type.’
Jessie gawped, his affront at using something Tatum loathed to be seen as impressively tactical.
‘Clingy?’ Tatum echoed.
‘If there’s some kind of misunderstanding, then tell me, but don’t stand there laying down the law like you own me.’
‘Fuck you, Eden.’
‘You already did that, and I thought we knew where we stood. I thought we were alike, me and you.’
Jessie chewed on her bottom lip. He had to be careful. So careful.
‘There is no me and you,’ Tatum declared.
‘Exactly. So thanks for the offer, but I’m saying another time.’ There was a short pause. ‘I thought you liked it like this,’ he said, his tone softening. ‘The way I was reading it this morning, I thought it’s how we both got our kicks. Too much too soon is going to fuck that up. I sure don’t want that – do you?’
Jessie raised her eyebrows slightly. Damn, he was good – his clearly well-practised avoidance tactics no doubt having been used to get him out of situations on more than one occasion.
But Tatum had to see through it – unless Tatum wasn’t quite so willing to give him up as she wanted him to believe.
‘I don’t get kept waiting,’ she said. ‘By anyone.’
‘Except me,’ Eden replied.
She could almost hear the smile in his tone. A smile that, even then, made her insides churn.
‘Try relinquishing a bit more of that control, like you did earlier,’ he added, his voice lowering so it was only just audible. ‘I know you enjoyed it.’
Jessie tilted her ear towards them more, holding her breath so she wouldn’t miss anything.
The prolonged silence told her Tatum was contemplating. Quick to lose her temper, she would have by now. But whether it was what Eden was saying, something he was doing, maybe even just the look in his eyes that she herself had been on the receiving end of, he was one of the few, potentially the only one, she had ever come across who knew how to put Tatum precisely in her place.
That, as well as his rejection of Tatum’s moves, confirmed it: she now didn’t just want his help; she wanted him.
‘Don’t count on me being there waiting,’ Tatum said before footsteps – female footsteps – headed off to the kitchen.
He’d let her end with the upper hand, just as Tatum would want – the one thing that would placate her.
He had played her to perfection. A terrifying perfection.
Knowing that if Eden had been telling the truth about being tired he was going to head past the foot of the stairs to the arch, she pulled herself from the step where she was crouching. Clutching the newel post, she stepped into the shadows at the top of the stairs just as Eden passed the foot of them.
As if by instinct, or whether she’d been on his mind too, he looked up.
Her stomach flipped as their eyes met again. As he stood side-on to her, she knew something was passing between them. What, she didn’t know, but it held them both fixed to the spot longer than a glance of acknowledgement required.
He wasn’t stupid enough to make his way up there though, not with Tatum potentially re-emerging any second. She couldn’t even be sure he’d want to – maybe what had happened between them in the lock-up still having left a nasty taste in his mouth. That maybe he’d only done what he had for her in the lounge because it was the decent thing to do. Or maybe it was a demonstration to her of the subtle power he had boasted to Pummel about.
Regardless, heat still gathered in her lower abdomen as those dark eyes remained unflinching on hers, as if he was enticing her to make her move.
As he stepped away, disappearing through the arch, her hand became numb on the newel post. A cool perspiration dampened the back of her neck at the prospect of what she was contemplating.
She hurried up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her. She pressed her head back against it as she stared up at the moonlit ceiling.
Her mind was made up.
17
Jessie could hear their voices echoing out from the living room as she passed through the arch. She sent a wary glance over her shoulder before ascending the parallel staircase.
She had her excuses ready should she be caught – that she was on her way up to borrow some music off Tatum. The woman barely acknowledged her most of the time, but she did occasionally lend her a few things, albeit it with the dismissal of an older sister irritated by a toddler. Jessie had tried to befriend her a couple of times, even if just for a little female companionship, but Tatum had laughed, sneered even.
She took a left into the recess. She pressed her ear to Eden’s door but, reassuringly, as she’d hoped, heard only silence inside.
She hesitated; knew it wasn’t just the fear of being caught that was the cause of her leaden legs, but the fear of further humiliation. It was the fear of rejection.
Her one assurance was that he was trying to get her on side. Charm was a given, manipulation in abundance but, as was apparent from his self-control on three occasions now, he was choosing to play her carefully. Very carefully.
Now she was ready to play back. And she was not going to go back on her resolve.
She placed her spare skeleton key in the lock, clenched the closed padlock in her hand, counted to three, and opened the door.
Eden was reclining on the bed, the moonlight at his feet, the pillows plumped up behind his back. He had one arm behind his head whilst, with the other hand, he mindlessly scraped at the wallpaper behind him with his flick knife – the knife Jessie had no doubt would have come hurtling towards her had she been anyone else breaking into his room. Instead his hand stilled as his gaze locked on hers.
Wetting her dry lips, she closed the door behind her, locking it again and leaving the key in place.
/> She peeled off the cloak of chunky sweater she’d worn just in case she had got stopped en route and dropped it to the floor beside her. Underneath was her best dress, her favourite dress. She hadn’t worn it for decades, but the thick waistband still clung flatteringly to her slender waist, the deep square neckline showing sufficient cleavage, the zip from that to her waist keeping the upper half of the dress snug to her skin. She knew the rich red suited her pale skin and dark hair, that the flare was flattering to her slender legs, the mid-thigh length showing off what she believed, in Eden’s eyes, were her best feature. Her legs had certainly seemed to cause him some distraction down in the lock-up.
Despite her resolve, she hovered by the door, the breeze from the open window opposite caressing her thighs, her chest, and hardening her nipples against the single barrier of cotton that contained her braless breasts.
More exhilarating was Eden having the same effect with his gaze alone as, in his mouth, over and over again he slowly flipped what she’d come to know was a mint. Reassuringly, from the look in his eyes during his slow appraisal of her, rejection was anything but forefront of his mind.
Her resolve was cemented.
She stepped up to the bed, kept a couple of feet away, her voice low so as not to be heard in the neighbouring rooms – Pummel’s to the left, Dice’s to the right, Tatum’s above, and her and Eden slap-bang in the middle. It wasn’t just dangerous; the prospect of what could happen between them moving from fantasy to reality was thrilling.
‘Do something for me and I’ll think about helping you,’ she whispered.
He flipped the mint in his mouth once more. ‘Like what?’
‘You picked my lock last night, to get into my room.’
‘Force of habit.’
‘Can you pick that?’ she asked, placing the closed padlock on the bedside table.
Moving just his arm, flexing the muscles contained in his T-shirt from the simple motion, he picked the padlock up. He glanced at the base of it, before spinning the hoop of the bar tauntingly around his index finger. ‘Why?’ he asked, meeting her gaze again.
‘Can you or not?’
His lips curled into a subtle smile.
As he eased off the bed, Jessie turned square-on to face him before backing up against the large chest of drawers that dominated the wall beside his bed as he sauntered past her on his way across to the door. He collected the wooden chair along the way, shoving it under the door handle before heading back over. After discarding the padlock onto the bed, he faced her head-on.
He rotated his finger in a small circle, indicating for her to turn her back to him – confirmation that he didn’t trust her motives at all.
Fortunately she’d gained just enough trust in his motives to do as he asked. With a rush of heat accumulating between her legs from knowing what he intended, she did as he asked.
The warmth of his firm hands as he took a hold of her wrists and spread her palms flat on the top of the chest of drawers sent instant sparks of pleasure to her toes. He ran his fingers back through her hair first, before sliding his hands down her neck, her shoulders, her cleavage, the sides and undersides of her breasts, down to her waist, over her stomach and to her hips.
‘I’m far from reliant on weapons,’ she whispered across her shoulder, struggling to keep her tone nonchalant. ‘Remember?’
‘You are if you don’t want Pummel suspecting this was anything more than a regular attack.’
‘I’m not here to hurt you.’
‘Yeah, well, experience tells me it pays to be suspicious,’ he said, his minty breath caressing her now exposed neck as he slid his hands downwards over the curve of her behind. ‘Especially as I appear to be unravelling all sorts about you by the hour.’
He nudged her feet further apart with his.
She held her breath. ‘I thought you liked risk-taking.’
‘Calculated risk-taking,’ he said, his lips dangerously close to her ear in a move that she had no doubt was intentional before he slid the backs of his hands up her inner thighs.
She snatched back a breath, her hands clawing wood as his fingers brushed dangerously close to between her legs.
‘Especially considering you’ve already tried to kill me once,’ he said softly against her ear. ‘Let alone threatened to castrate me twice.’
She didn’t know why she thought he wouldn’t do it, but he did. Her hands involuntarily clenched into fists as the back of his stroked her sex from front to back. But far from being repulsed, it felt strangely unobtrusive, shockingly arousing, not least because of how fleeting he had made it before he placed his hands either side of hers to let her know he was done.
‘Then maybe,’ she said, turning in the enclosure he had created to gaze back into his eyes, ‘instead of frisking me, you should focus on convincing me why either would be a bad option.’
Eden glanced down at her cleavage, clearly detecting she was breathing a little heavier than normal. ‘And how would you like me to do that?’ he asked, meeting her gaze again.
‘By making yourself as useful to me as I am to you.’
‘By picking padlocks?’
‘By teaching me how to pick padlocks.’
His eyebrows lifted just a fraction. ‘Why?’
‘You don’t need to know why.’
Lips parted slightly, he ran his mint along the back of his upper teeth in a swift and contemplative move. ‘So you tried to kill me, now you want to hire me.’
‘I’d hardly call it that.’
‘Then what would you call it – if not being here to request my services?’
Her bare toes curled in the soft fabric of her ballet pumps at the intoxicating playful glint in his eyes. ‘Can you do it, or not?’
‘And my payment is?’
‘Like I said, I’ll think about helping you.’
‘Think about it? You’re not used to this kind of bargaining, are you?’
‘It’s what I’m offering.’
He shifted the weight on his foot, she was sure, moving an inch closer in the process, let alone drawing her attention down to his hips, his groin, his hard, flat torso. ‘Unfortunately, from where I’m standing, you coming here looking like that makes me think entrapment all over again.’
‘It wasn’t entrapment, it was survival. You gave me no choice.’
‘You had a choice about how far it went,’ he said as he gazed deep into her eyes.
‘Did I?’
‘You know you did. So, confession time: How far would you have gone to get the reaction you wanted, if I hadn’t exposed your plan?’
Her gaze wavered under the intensity of his. ‘I was about to stop you.’
‘I’m not so convinced.’ It was back – the dark glint in his eyes above the subtle movement of his jaw. ‘But ask yourself, after I managed to pin you face first to the floor, despite you thinking it was impossible, what would have happened if I’d done the same over that pool table? If I hadn’t pulled back?’ He paused for just a moment as he searched her gaze. ‘You were counting on a lot, Jessie. Looks to me like we were both lucky to get off as easily as we did.’ The solemnity in his eyes eased a little as he flashed her another hint of a smile. ‘Especially as you were threatening my most prized possessions.’
It was a smile that reminded her she was there for far more than unlocking padlocks.
‘If you can’t do it, just tell me.’
‘I can do it. I can pick just about anything. Doors. Padlocks. Same principle.’
‘Prove it.’
Stepping back, he took the padlock from the bed. He eased something out of the back of his belt, cupped the padlock in his hand, used the small metal pins swiftly and efficiently, before holding the open padlock towards her.
She reached out to take it from him but he pulled it back from her reach, tossing it back on the bed.
She looked back into his eyes. ‘And you can teach me?’
‘I told you: not without knowing why.’
‘Pummel has something locked away. I’m curious to see what it is.’
‘Seems like a lot of effort for some curiosity. Though I’m not so modest as to not recognise that my irresistible charm is a huge part of the compulsion to make your request.’
‘You’re an arrogant bastard.’
‘Yes, but an arrogant bastard who, lucky for you, had a very misspent youth.’
But she couldn’t tell him. Trusting him enough to make the request was one leap; disclosing her suspicions was an entirely different risk.
He’d know, as every con did, the value of youngsters in Blackthorn – especially in the south. If Pummel had some inevitably sick and dark plan set up for them, a way to make a lot of money, gain a lot of power, and very fast, then she was going to put a stop to it. Somehow. And the fewer who knew that, especially Eden – yet another thing he could have over her – the more chance she stood of succeeding.
If there were youngsters down there at all.
‘It doesn’t concern you,’ she said.
‘For all I know I’m being very irresponsible in teaching you.’
It was her turn to smile. ‘The con who can’t take an iota of advice is worried about being irresponsible?’
‘Clearly you’re not, turning up here propositioning me dressed like that.’
Her stomach flipped, a single breath caught in her throat, the playful glint in his eyes contagious.
This was the moment she had to snag. This was when she found out more about him. This was also when she took the biggest gamble she could. But he wasn’t going to be stupid enough to tell Pummel. He knew it would mean instant death.
‘You don’t like the way I’m dressed?’ she asked, his eyes already having negated the need to ask.
‘I love the way you’re dressed – and you know it without needing to fish for compliments.’
She pressed back against the chest of drawers for a little added support. ‘I thought I wasn’t your type. I thought that, despite what you said to me in my room, Tatum’s your type after all. Especially from the way you were letting her fawn over you in the lounge.’
Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Page 18