Page 82 of Wolfsbane Hall
“You know I cannot confirm that.” He tilted his head and examined her. His gaze landed on her every bruise, her swollen limbs, and her loose silk gown that barely left anything to the imagination.
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he didn’t look away. Rather, he took three large strides into the room and hovered above her like the Angel of Death coming to consume his next victim.
Heat and desperation pooled between her legs, and she longed to reach her hand down and relieve the ache, but she absolutely could not do that while he was watching her.
Tension painted the space between them. It surged and sucked all other energy out of the room except the unbearable need tingling in her core. Celestine licked her lips and tossed her legs over the side of her bed, sitting up, bringing them even closer together.
If he was the Specter, was this the actual moment he wanted? To talk to her as Dean, in private, unmasked but also masked…somewhere in between because they both knew the truth now?
She gulped but lifted her chin to catch his gaze in hers. Refusing to look away. “What is my favorite color, Dean?”
“Bloodred, like the color you stain your lips every night.” His hand hovered near her chin as if he wanted to caress her,but maddeningly, he still wouldn’t erase the space between them and touch her.
Truth burned in her blood. It was him—her Specter. James and Everett didn’t know her favorite color; she’d never once told them, and they never once cared enough to ask.
But Celestine was no fool; she would test her theory and prove it right. Just because she could.
Her eyes fell on her chessboard. It was her move. “Pawn to H5.” She tilted her chin back up to him in a challenge.
His gaze glanced down at the board, and thoughts poured across his face like ink in water. He was deciding if he’d take her bait.
“Queen to G6.” He took her pawn, but he was out of moves, and the pinching at the corner of his lips showed that he knew it, too. He was going to lose the game.
“Queen to G6.” Neither of them physically moved the pieces. They didn’t have to. The board was memorized in their heads. Instead, they kept their gazes locked on one another, having a conversation without needing to say the words.
“Bishop G1.” Blackness cloaked the edges of his eyes, but it was not dangerous or dark; it was just him.
“Queen G1.”
A smirk lifted on Dean’s face. “A sacrificial queen.”
She cocked her head like a hawk. “Isn’t that what I am to you?”
“Never.” He stepped closer and finally—finally—touched her, his hand cupping her face. “Never.”
“It’s your move.” Celestine’s words came out as a sensual plea.
He leaned down, his lips hovering over hers. ”Bishop to G1.”
“You are trapped,” she breathed.
“Yes.” His thumb caressed her lips.
Her chest rose with frantic desire, her breasts rising with it. “You’ve lost. Concede.”
“I concede it all to you and hold nothing back.” With that, his lips crashed down on hers.
For a beat, she stiffened from the shock, frozen like a lake in the dead of winter. Dean Ashbrook was touching her—not only touching her, he was kissing her. And damn, she wasn’t going to waste this moment. So when her brain caught up, she swung her legs under her so that she could kneel on her bed and get closer to him.
Her fingers curled around his suit jacket, and she whimpered from not being able to be closer to him. If she were going to have this moment, she wanted all of it. She wanted to claw at the rough flesh of his back. She wanted to climb him like she would a mountain.
Because he had always been her Everest.
Running her tongue along his lower lip, she forced him to open further to her, and he was happy to oblige. More than happy, because he cupped her ass and pulled her closer to him, the motion allowing her legs to wrap around him.
Kissing him was like both waging a war and suing for peace. It was all tongues, teeth, and hands roaming all over each other’s bodies, but it was also gentleness and reverence.
And it was also confusion.
