Possession (Fallen Angels #5)(54)
Author: J.R. Ward

“Cait. I can hear the hesitation in your voice. I swear, last night was a fluke. That’s not who I am—I didn’t flake out on you on purpose.”

Well … he was right about the pause, but way off-track on the “why” behind it. Dear Lord, how did this work? Did she tell him that she’d seen someone else last night?

“Seen” as in “had sex on the floor in the back of a club with him.”

At what juncture did she tell G.B. she was seeing somebody else? Was she even dating Duke? Maybe it was just a two-nighter.

What a mess.

“I know,” G.B. muttered. “It’s not at all how I thought the night was going to go.”

Shoot, she’d spoken out loud. “No, no, I meant …” Better to do this in person, she thought. “I’d love to have lunch with you, and I really do understand about last evening. I’ll see you after class?”

The relief in his voice was palpable. “See you then, Cait. And thanks again for being so cool.”

Jim woke up alone.

As his eyes opened, the first thing he did was look for Sissy, but she was gone as if she had never been. Rolling over, he could still smell her in the sheets, however, just the faintest hint of sweet female skin lingering where she had lain next to him.

Getting out of bed, he pulled on some clothes, took a pit stop in the bathroom, and then went down to her room. The door was ajar, but he knocked on the jamb anyway. When there was no answer, he put his head in. The bed was made, with no sign of her having been in there.

He hit the stairs, descending quickly—

Jim stopped dead on the grandfather clock’s landing. Food. He smelled … real food. Like the homemade stuff his mother had made all those years ago.

“What the hell?” Adrian said from the top of the stairs. “Is that … breakfast?”

“I think so. I certainly didn’t make it.”

“Duh.” The other angel limped around the balustrade and joined him to finish the trip down. “When I smelled smoke last night, I figured you were trying to bake.”

Yeah, not hardly.

The pair of them strode for the kitchen, and the closer they got, the more the nuances came out. Cinnamon. Eggs. Coffee.

“Wow,” Adrian said as they came into the room.

Sissy was working over the stove like she knew what she was doing, whisking something that looked like scrambled eggs in a bowl and then pouring the mix into a pan that sizzled. Three plates had been set out on the little table in the middle of the room, mismatched silverware was lined up, and mugs sat like flags at the upper right corners of the settings.

“Oh, my God, toast,” Adrian said as he barged ahead and parked it in one of the chairs. Without waiting for an invitation, he reached for the stack of what had been bread, but was now golden brown crunch just waiting for butter. “I didn’t know we had a toaster—how the hell did you pull this off?”

Sissy glanced over her shoulder, meeting Jim’s eyes only briefly before looking away. “The oven. Under the broiler. That’s how we did it at summer camp.”

“Can I help myself?” the other angel said, in the process of buttering things up.

“Please do. I like mine with cinnamon sugar on top.” Sissy turned around with the pan. “I hope this is okay? I’m not a sunny-side-up person. Uncooked yolks are nasty.”

There was a pause, as if she were waiting for Jim to sit down.

He wanted a cigarette more than he needed breakfast, but he wasn’t going to be rude. “This is great. Thanks.”

A second later, she served Ad first, using a wooden spoon to shuffle some fluffy onto the angel’s plate. Then she was close by, doing the same for Jim.

She’d had a shower; he could smell the shampoo he himself used, and the ends of her hair were damp. And the fact that she was in the same clothes she’d worn the day before made him decide they needed to take care of her wardrobe today.

“Thanks,” he said again as he picked up his fork.

Light. Hot. Delicious. A real break from the crap he’d been throwing down his gut lately. And yet even as he ate like the starved man he was, it was impossible not to think of how they’d spent the night, lying together in that bed of his. He knew she had to be remembering it, too—she was stiff and awkward as she moved over to her own plate and then put the pan in the sink.

Lot of clinking as silverware met china, the sounds of the meal loud in his ears, making the silence between the three of them a tangible fourth party.

Adrian ate most of the toast, all of his eggs, and drank two cups of coffee along the way. And then he folded his napkin and hefted himself to his feet. “I’m going to shower and then head out.”

Jim frowned. “Where you going?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“Out.”

As the guy turned away, Jim’s first impulse was to throw out a shitload of hell-no-you-pull-that-with-me, but then he caught sight of the way Sissy was fidgeting in her chair.

Was it possible Adrian had actually grown some tact and was giving them a little space?

“I was hoping to talk,” Sissy said softly as they were left alone.

Will miracles never cease.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry. Just thinking about my roommate—the one with the hollow leg.”

“Is that why he limps?”

Jim lifted his brows. “You’ve never heard that expression before?”

“It’s a saying?”

“He’s just really hungry.”

“Oh.”

Sissy got up and went back for the coffee machine, pouring more of the strong java she’d made for them all. And as she moved around, he found his eyes running up and down her, measuring her shoulders, her hips, her legs. Hard to see anything underneath those baggy clothes of his, but he’d felt enough of it that he could extrapolate—

Rubbing his temples, he thought … man, he had to stop this shit.

“More coffee for you?” As she pivoted around to him, her mug in one hand, the pot in the other, he pulled it together.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He held out his mug and watched the steam rise as she topped him off. Then she was back in her chair.

Lot of silence.

“So, I didn’t think this kitchen worked at all.” He nodded as he glanced around, noticing that the countertops didn’t look quite so dingy, and neither did the floor. Clearly, she’d tidied up a little as well. “I thought it was nothing but a dust-catching relic. Like the rest of this place.”