Empress in Lingerie (Lingerie 5)

“Did something happen, tesoro? Are you worried about something in particular?”

“No, not at all.” I tried to sound as convincing as possible. “I just realized it was stupid to not have a gun in the house. I thought I didn’t need one when Knuckles came in, but I probably could have killed him if I’d just had one. So, it’s something I should have.”

“I agree.”

I went to bed late that night. We kept eating and drinking, and before I knew it, it was two in the morning.

I went into my childhood bedroom where my queen bed was waiting for me. It had a champagne pink duvet with fluffy pillows and a gray headboard. My furniture was gray too, the subtle colors contrasting against the Mediterranean-style windows.

Conway and Sapphire went into his bedroom down the hall, and the rest of my family stayed in the guest bedrooms around the house. If we didn’t have a three-story place, it would be cramped.

I stripped down to a t-shirt and my panties and got into bed. My phone was on the nightstand and I grabbed it, seeing the missed video call. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

But I had a hunch about who it was from.

I called the number back, the screen black as the call went through.

Bones answered, his hard jaw still just as stern in the dark. He was in the bed I used to sleep in, shirtless and on his side. His broad shoulders were chiseled and powerful through the screen, and his blue eyes were still bright even when there was barely any light. “Hey, baby.”

I lay on my side and propped my phone on a pillow, so I could look at the screen without holding it. “Why do you always call me that?”

“Because you’re my baby.” His deep voice was raspy, like he’d been asleep when I called.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll let you go then. I just wondered whose number this was…”

“Don’t play dumb.” He suddenly turned hostile, falling back into his usual stride. “You knew exactly who it was.”

I did, and I didn’t pretend otherwise.

“Enjoy your Christmas Eve?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, I did.” If he was sleeping in Lake Garda, then he obviously expected me to uphold my end of the deal. He was seven hours away, so he couldn’t do anything with that kind of distance. He really did have me pinned under his thumb. “What did you do?”

“Went to the pub with the guys.”

“Who are the guys?”

“Max, Theron, and Shane.”

“Do they know about me?”

“Yes.” He stared at the screen with the same intensity as he did in real life. His black ink couldn’t hide his muscular frame under the designs. In fact, it only heightened it.

“You didn’t take a woman home?” I didn’t know why I asked the question when I didn’t really care. The silence felt empty, and I felt obligated to say something.

“Jealous?”

“Just curious.”

“No. But I wouldn’t bring her here anyway.”

“And where would you take her?”

“In the back of my truck. At a hotel. Against the wall of an alley…the bathroom. Wherever.”

“That’s romantic…”

“You know better than anyone that I’m not a romantic guy.”

“And did you screw a woman in the bathroom tonight?”

A slow grin crept into his lips. “You are jealous. You hate me, but you want me all to yourself. If it makes you feel any better, I feel exactly the same way. I get hard thinking about killing you, but I also want to carry your shit to the car and make sure you make it through the snow just fine. It’s stupid.”

“Yes…it is stupid.”

Minutes of silence passed, and we stared at each other through the screen. One hand was underneath my pillow while the other rested on my waistline. My body was covered with the shirt and the sheets, so he couldn’t see my bare skin.

He broke the silence with his husky words. “So fucking beautiful.”

I kept my face stoic, but my chest rose with the deep breath I took. We were hundreds of miles apart, but I could feel his presence in the room. I could feel his possession through his voice, feel the sincerity in his masculine tone. I could feel his lips on my body even though he wasn’t really there. I could feel his big hands brush against my skin before he gripped me. He claimed me without being in the room, claimed me from hundreds of miles away. That was the kind of power he had. “What’s your real name?”

His expression didn’t change as he stared me down. “Bones is my name.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s my middle name—and it’s the name I go by.”

“Tell me.”

His crystal-blue eyes didn’t blink. “Why? Why does it matter?”

“Because I want to know. I don’t want to call you by that name anymore. You call me baby. I want to call you something else.”