A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(21)
Cassidy had, as I’d expected, been no help whatsoever when Mom and Dad went to see her. She’d basically chased them off her property. After a brief stop back at the office to check on me—I wasn’t as trustworthy as Lukas—they’d gone in search of another source, and I’d sneaked off to ask Valefar about unquartzable Elemental demons. At least if I was forced to endure being at his beck and call for the next fifty-five years, I could get some info out of the deal. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been there, so Lukas and I had gotten stuck with good old-fashioned research—which, so far, had been pointless.
“It serves a purpose. We need information.” Lukas came to stand beside me. He had that look again. The same one I’d seen in his eyes when we left Dobbs Park. His gaze traveled the length of my body twice before lifting—and staying—on my lips. “Besides, if left to our own devices…”
I’d ultimately put the brakes on things in the park, and even though one side of my brain screamed at me to keep quiet and continue working, the other side, one might argue my demonic side, wanted to urge him on. “And what devices would those be, Mr. Scott?”
There was a spark of deviousness in his eyes, and it sent my pulse racing. He traced the outline of my jaw, then let his finger drift over my chin and down the front of my throat before sliding his hand around to the back of my neck. There was no butt grabbing this time, but it didn’t matter. The look in his eyes was ten times hotter than a copped feel could be.
“You know.” A wicked grin slipped across his lips, and his voice dropped to just above a whisper. “The inappropriate ones.”
With a single twitch of his wrist, he brought us together. Our lips met, and I felt it everywhere. From my forehead down to the tips of each toe. Warmth spread like wildfire as he grasped for skin through my clothing. His left hand drifted down my torso, then slipped underneath my shirt and wrapped around my waist. Skin against skin. The contact made it all feel so much more electric, and I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped my lips. A shocking patch of warmth against the cool air in the office.
“Touching, kissing,” he said between kisses. We stumbled backward, up against the wall behind my desk. With a jerk, we were facing the other direction, flush against the desk. In a single, swift maneuver, Lukas had our placement reversed. He was sitting on the edge, and I was in his lap with a leg on either side.
“Kisses aren’t inappropriate,” I said as he trailed a set of scorchers along my jaw and to my ear, taking the tip between his teeth for a fraction of a second. The action nearly had me screaming.
Warm breath tickled my neck. “The kind I have in mind are.” He brought his lips back to my ear. “I want to finish what we started earlier, Jessie.”
Hell in a hailstorm.
We’d hopped the danger line—one Lukas himself had put into place—and had rocketed into Holy shit territory. A few months ago, when I’d thought I was about to lose him for good, I’d suggested we sleep together. He very politely turned me down, and in the end I was thankful. I hadn’t really been ready to go there. I still wasn’t. But a part of me wanted to see how far he would take this. He wasn’t usually so open with the physical stuff, but lately he seemed bolder. More aggressive—and God, did I like it.
His kisses became more urgent, and his hands were everywhere all at once. On my face, tangled in my hair, back under my shirt. With a low growl, he grasped the belt loops on either side of my jeans and used them to haul me onto my knees. The hem of my T-shirt rode up, and a second later, warm kisses covered my stomach. I gasped. The noise only seemed to drive him harder.
There was no thought. For the first time, I wasn’t worried about my hand placement or whether or not I was kissing him right. It was all about the sensation.
In a dizzying move, he yanked me around and shifted us over to the couch. I landed on my back, Lukas hovering above me.
“The kind I have in mind are very inappropriate.” He made a move to push forward and kiss me again, but hesitated, stopping inches away. Curling his fingers around chunks of the cushion, he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he half sighed, half growled. “You see what you do to me? You, Jessie Darker, are a dangerous girl.”
“Who, me?” It took a moment, but I was able to catch my breath. My brain registered that stopping was the right move, but my body, with all its run-amok teenage hormones, was screaming at me to pull him back down and keep right on doing what we’d been doing. It felt like I was standing on the edge of change. Like one step in either direction could be life altering. It was electric and made me feel as alive as any Mashing Mom and I had ever done. I wasn’t ready to let that go just yet. “Besides, you’re supposed to spend time with me, remember?”
He leaned in, and I was sure he was going to say screw restraint and kiss me again, but he only rested his forehead against mine. His breathing was heavy, and I could feel the thumping of his pulse against my skin, both distracting and calming all at once. “I hardly think your father’s idea of guard duty entails the inappropriate placement of my hands and lips.”
The only way to free Lukas from Wrath was to coax the Sin into someone else—ironically, his annoyingly long-lived ex, Meredith, was kind enough to supply the perfect little rage-filled package. But to do that, he’d had to die. I bet there weren’t many girls out there that could brag that their father killed their boyfriend—and then brought him back to life again. The end result was, Lukas was now bound to Dad. Add smooching your boss’s daughter to Lukas’s already ancient view of relationship etiquette, and you got some seriously frustrated teenage hormones.