Chapter 133: Last Bite

Elias smiled at her.

Then his expression changed.

His lips parted as if a cry was about to escape, but he remembered the closed bedroom upstairs and the woman sleeping behind it. Serena Blackwood might not wake easily after a night like that, but Elias had never built his life on luck. He sealed the sound behind his mouth and forced it down until only a small, muffled breath slipped out.

A second later, he laughed under his breath.

His arms slid around Liora Voss’s neck as if the little punishment had only made him more comfortable. One leg, still caught in her grip, shifted with loose confidence, and the other hooked around her as naturally as a vine finding a trellis. He ended up hanging from her like a lazy animal wrapped around a tree, warm and shameless and entirely too pleased with himself.

He seemed ready to say something. Then his face tightened for a second, and he lowered his head to her ear.

"Why did you hit me?" he whispered, sounding almost offended.

Liora’s voice came cold beside his cheek. "Because you deserved it."

Calling that reckless little stunt a surprise was insulting to the word. He had tipped himself backward over a stairwell railing in the middle of the night, wearing almost nothing, and expected her to admire the presentation. Surprise was a gift. That had been closer to a heart attack with silk wrapping.

Elias laughed again, softer this time.

Even a clay doll had a temper if someone poked it long enough. A professional thrill-seeker had grudges, too. Liora’s slap had not been only correction. There had been retaliation in it, clean and personal.

He moved the leg still held by her hand, trying to pull his ankle free. Liora released him.

He used the opening at once.

That freed leg wrapped around her as well, and his ankles crossed behind her back, locking into place with quiet satisfaction. The knot of his body tightened around her before she could step away.

Liora went rigid for half a breath.

Her hands still found his back.

She held him because dropping him would have made noise. That was the clean explanation. It was also a useful one, so she allowed it to remain in place.

"I’m hungry," Elias murmured into her ear.

His breath brushed the skin there, warm enough to make the small nerves along her neck wake in protest. Liora turned her head slightly, keeping her expression even.

"Did she not feed you enough?"

"Apparently not." Elias’s laugh was low against her ear. "If my sister couldn’t manage it, I guess I’ll have to trouble the younger one."

For a moment, Liora’s mind slipped.

The voice was right beside her, close enough that she could feel the shape of it against her skin, yet it seemed to come from somewhere farther away. Serena’s room, the message, the bathroom, the blood on the tub, the sound through the wall, the bare ankle in her hand. Each detail had been manageable alone. Together, they folded around her with a heat that had nowhere respectable to go.

By the time Liora fully returned to herself, she was already carrying him through the first floor.

The kitchen lights were low, leaving the room in a soft wash of stainless steel, marble, and shadow. At this hour, the Blackwood residence had the sterile elegance of a private showroom after closing, all expensive surfaces and hidden staff corridors. The refrigerator hummed quietly. The counters were spotless. Someone had left a glass pitcher of filtered water near the sink, its sides fogged with cold.

She should have made Elias get down.

By the time that thought became clear, she had already set him on the island.

His arms and legs slipped away from her at once. The sudden loss of his weight left her hands empty in a way that was irritatingly physical, as if her body had expected resistance and found air instead.

Elias sat with his palms braced on the marble. His legs hung over the edge, bare feet swinging slowly above the floor. The silk robe fell around his thighs with no discipline at all.

Liora’s gaze dropped before she could stop it.

She lifted her eyes almost immediately, but Elias caught the look. Of course he did. His smile changed, brightening with that awful satisfaction of someone who had found the exact thread to pull.

As if he knew precisely what she was trying not to think about, he said, slowly and clearly, "I haven’t cleaned up yet."

"Filthy," Liora said, her mouth curving.

The word came out smooth enough. Inside, another thought moved with unpleasant sharpness.

So that was why the floral scent upstairs had been so heavy.

Elias did not seem insulted. He only tilted his head toward the refrigerator. "What’s good?"

"Sandwiches."

"Fine."

He sounded resigned, but hunger had already stripped most of his standards away. At that point, food was food.

Liora opened the refrigerator and took out a prepared sandwich wrapped in clear paper, the kind the household kept for late schedules and people who came home at unreasonable hours. Turkey, cheese, greens, a thin layer of sauce, neat crusts cut clean. It looked precise enough to belong in a hotel lounge, not warm enough to be kind.

She handed it to him.

The gesture looked like care. It had the shape of being looked after, of someone taller and calmer feeding the person sitting on the counter. Liora made no move toward the microwave, no move toward a pan, no move to soften the chill from the refrigerator.

Elias accepted the cold sandwich.

The coldness in Liora’s eyes was almost the same temperature.

She recognized the feeling as soon as it appeared. It should not have been there. It crossed a line she had never agreed to name. Even noticing his swollen mouth was already too much, but the resentment under that notice was worse. It belonged to someone with a claim.

Liora did not have one.

That was the part that made it hard to breathe.

She stood across from him and watched him eat the refrigerated sandwich as if no one had ever told him food could be heated. He seemed content enough, chewing with the uncomplicated pleasure of someone who had spent too much energy and did not care what form the calories took.

Her gaze settled on his lips.

They were faintly swollen, especially at the center of the lower one, where fullness had been drawn out too much. There was no cut. No broken skin. Nothing that gave her the dignity of calling it damage.

Liora knew her own restraint. She had not done that.

Which meant someone else had.

Their relationship had reached that point after all.

Elias’s lashes lifted slightly. The red at the corners of his eyes had not faded, and when his expression shifted, the trace of pleasure there deepened by a fraction. He had seen where she was looking.

He ate the second-to-last bite of the sandwich, then lowered his hand.

"I can’t finish it."

Liora looked at the single bite left between his fingers.

For a moment, she did not understand what trick he had decided to play now.

"That much?" she said lightly. "A cat could finish that."

"Nonsense." Elias rejected the claim with righteous seriousness. "A cat absolutely could not." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Liora laughed softly. "Who says?"

Elias slid down from the island.

His bare feet touched the kitchen floor without a sound. He came toward her slowly, silk shifting around his knees, the last bite of sandwich still in his hand. When he reached her, he stepped close enough that their bodies nearly touched.

Then he lifted his face beneath her eyes.

"I do," he said, with a sly smile that made the answer worse. "What’s wrong with that? Meow."

Liora’s breath caught before she could make it behave.

A cat, apparently, could not finish it.

She kept her smile where it was and refused to let him have the satisfaction of seeing the rest. "Throw it away, then."

Elias frowned. "Wasting food is shameful."

"Then finish it."

Liora was still smiling, but the words sounded unfamiliar even to her, thinner at the edges than she wanted them to be. The problem was not distance. The problem was that there was too much showing through the cracks.

Elias put the final bite into his mouth.

Before he could speak again, light flared above them.

It came from the second-floor stair landing.

No servant in this house would switch that light on casually at this hour. Staff knew better than to disturb the household, especially after a night when the air itself felt guilty. Which meant there were only so many people who could have touched it.

Footsteps followed.

Slow. Unhurried. Growing clearer.

If Serena truly came downstairs, she would see her adoptive sister pressed close to her lover in the kitchen, while the house was still full of evidence Serena had left on him.

Liora’s heart began to pound hard enough that it hurt, as if a hand had closed around it and squeezed.

She tilted her face slightly upward and swallowed the sound already rising in her throat.

She was afraid she would laugh.

Not from amusement. Not exactly. The thrill had teeth, and they were already inside her.

Elias moved against her.

Liora looked down.

He had the last piece of sandwich caught between his teeth. His eyes were clear, direct, and indecently obvious.

He could not finish it, and he did not want to throw it away.

Then someone else would have to eat it.

Liora understood him.

Her body moved before thought had time to arrange itself into permission. In the next instant, Elias’s face was close enough to blur, and her mouth was on his.

The instigator froze.

For all his nerve, Elias had not expected her to actually do it.

That brief stillness was the only surrender he gave her, and Liora took it without mercy. She claimed the last bite from him as if she had been the starving one all along, taking food, heat, and breath together while the footsteps above them turned the kitchen into a trap with marble counters and good lighting.

The sandwich was cold.

His mouth was not.

The difference struck her with an almost ugly force. Under the thin taste of bread and meat and sauce, there was heat enough to undo the shape of her restraint. The danger sharpened everything. Serena could still appear. The stair light still burned. A door could open, a step could descend, and the entire careful fiction of sisterhood and distance would tear down the middle.

Elias’s hands had gone to the edge of the island behind him. Liora’s fingers had found his waist without permission from her better judgment. Their hearts beat too fast, not in harmony, but close enough that each seemed to answer the other through the narrow space between them.

Finally, the light upstairs went out.

A door closed.

Only then did Liora let the kiss break.

Their breathing separated slowly. Elias took several steps back, lips parted, drawing air like someone pulled from deep water. The robe had shifted again, but he no longer bothered pretending modesty was part of the game.

Liora stood where he had left her and tasted the last of it.

She had been wrong.

The sandwich was not cold.

What remained in her mouth was burning enough to make a person melt from the inside.

"Was it good?" Elias asked softly.

"Not bad," Liora said.

His smile returned, sweet and wicked in the same breath.

"Then remember it." He tilted his head, eyes bright beneath the low kitchen light. "Your sister’s taste was in that."

Liora’s head lifted at once.

She stared at him.

Elias smiled back with open delight, his face calm as a devil’s. "You didn’t like the surprise?"

He let the question hang for a heartbeat, then added gently, "Ms. Voss, who isn’t interested in men."