Page 18 of Tail Me No Lies
The thing was, when she finally worked herself up enough to ask, he grinned, called her kitten, and his tail brushed up against her.
That was it. That was all it took for him to derail her.
Fuck, this was embarrassing. There should be a law about a black belt flirt master using his skills on a novice.
The next morning, tired and grumpy, she snuck into the kitchen hoping to avoid Nox.
Except he was already up, in her kitchen, wearing nothing but pajama bottoms slung low on his hips. Singing as he cooked. Singing badly but singing. The cooking smelled delicious. The wuap sat at his feet, patiently waiting for a morsel of food to drop.
Nox’s hair was a just-fucked-hard tumble of messy curls, and it waseverything. Ruth wanted to be the one to mess up that hair. She wanted to be the reason he sang off-key with his tail keeping tempo.
He handed her a cup of steaming hot kava.
“What is this?” she mumbled, doing her best not to stare.
“You barely slept. I thought this would be appreciated.”
“It is.” Then, “How did you know I didn’t sleep? Were you watching me? Are you some kind of creep?”
He huffed. “Your bed squeaks. Iheardyou tossing and turning. No creepiness necessary.”
“Oh.” Embarrassment flooded her cheeks. “It was hot.”
“I bet.”
“It’s hot right now. I don’t think the environmental unit is working,” she said.
He made a rumbly noise that sounded like amusement.
“I’ll call a service tech to look at it.” There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in her budget, but the summer was too hot not to have properly working air conditioning. It was all very reasonable and totally plausible.
“I can do that,” Nox said.
“Can you? I mean, you don’t have to. That’s not your job. You’re here togrrand stuff.” She made a clawing gesture with her free hand and immediately regretted all her life choices that led to that moment.
“Well, I’ll try growling at it, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll research instructions on the network.”
Visions of Nox sitting cross-legged in bed on a lazy morning, wearing a pair of reading glasses with a tablet in one hand and paper and a pencil in the other, diligently taking notes, appeared crystal clear in her mind. She wanted that, to share that.
“You’ll research…are you flirting with me?” she asked.
“You finally noticed,” he said and leaned back against the counter, resting on his elbows. The morning light hit his abdomen just right…
Ruth set down the cup, discreetly wiping the corner of her mouth. “I have to work now. All day. I can’t be disturbed,” she said in a nervous rush and bolted from the room.
Yes, she heard him laugh. Yes, the whole experience was mortifying.
In the safety of her lab, she reviewed the situation. She couldn’t hope to out-flirt him. He was world-class and she was green. She rejected any notion of remaining impervious because he caught her literally drooling.
She turned into a flustered tween whenever Nox was around. He was the embodiment of every bad impulse she ever had and he was too damn hot. Like a debauched, just woke up from a three-day bender, rock star hot, and she couldn’t get enough. Which was creepy, because she was his boss and all the naughty thoughts in her head were inappropriate. Well, the boss thing was a polite pretense, but there was a power imbalance. Nox couldn’t exactly leave. As long as he needed to hide from whoever was after him, she had power over him, and she had to ignore her attraction.
It wouldn’t be ethical. Ruth wasn’t perfect. She had a temper, and her mouth ran off before her brain kicked in, but she was ethical.
The only solution presented itself: hide in her workshop to preserve her ethics. Not because she was a scaredy cat.
ChapterSeven
Nox
