The button-down wasn’t buttoned down yet, and the muscle shirt below it was so tight that the real estate of his torso was on display even though his upper body was covered: In the light that flooded down from the ceiling fixtures, his pecs and his abdominals looked like they had been deep-carved by a master hand, and the prominent wings of his hip bones rose up out of the waistband of his leathers.

Smooth skin. Powerful strength. And she knew every inch of him by touch and taste.

John seemed new to her tonight, however, and that was another thing—like the way she’d hesitated in front of the closed door—that made her uneasy. She could not ignore the fact that she was assessing the torso of her mate as if seeing it for the first time.

Something about Murhder had reset her.

What’s wrong? John signed.

That got through to her. Or maybe it was the worry in his face, his eyes narrowing.

She wanted to tell him nothing. That it was nothing, nope, she was fine, all good, hunky-fucking-dory. But she didn’t think he’d be fooled by that cascade of denial.

Instead, Xhex stepped into him. Placed her palms inside the two of halves of that shirt. Stroked her way around his torso to the small of his back.

Instantly, his bonding scent flared, and she was aware of a pang in the center of her chest. If she’d asked him what was wrong? His “nothing” would have been honest, and the dark spices surging into the bathroom proved it.

Her lips found the column of his throat. And as she brushed the skin over his jugular, he clapped his hands on her hips and squeezed. Hard. Like he wanted her badly—and she loved that about him. Her mate was always ready-to-go-now, and in this, they were compatible.

One of many ways they worked, she reminded herself.

Her tongue licked across his collarbone and then she dragged one fang over the swell of his pec beneath the muscle shirt. In response, his body shuddered, and she knew what that felt like, the prickling of sexual tension, the hypersensitivity to touch, the heat that kindled just under the skin. The anticipation. They had shared all of it so many times, and yet as she got down on her knees in front of him, she recorded his arousal on fresh mental pages and tracked the flush on his face and the thickening behind his fly with new eyes.

Oh, God, he mouthed as he threw out a pair of brace-myself hands, the tight confines of the bathroom giving him good anchors with the wall behind the sink and the door to the toilet’s cubicle.

Xhex ran her tongue on a meander across his lower belly, about an inch above his waistband. He was so leaned out from his workouts and what he did for a living in the field that there was just thin skin stretched over taut sinew and vein, everything so tight, it was like licking marble that happened to move.

Her fingertips skipped up his bulging thighs, the heat he was throwing off making the leather warm to the touch. The contours of his muscles were a road map of his heavy running while carrying weight, the ropes of strength offering ridges and valleys to explore.

Talk about ridges. There was one particular ridge she was interested in, and it didn’t have shit to do with his legs.

Behind his button fly, his cock was ready for airtime and then some, the erection so big and so demanding, she knew he had to be in pain from the tight squeeze.

Guess she’d have to help her male out.

One by one, the buttons of that fly came free. Top. Next. Next. Next … and final.

His arousal barged out and she looked up from the floor at him as she took the shaft in her palm.

John’s eyes glowed and his chest was pumping from ragged inhales. As he breathed heavily, the sight of those abdominals flexing and relaxing under the falling light was so erotic, she almost forgot what came next.

Nah, she remembered. She just liked the view.

Parting her lips, she extended her tongue and licked her way from his heavy sac all the way up the underside of his erection. And she liked his clenched jaw and flaring eyes so much, she did that again, taking her time.

Annnnnnnnnnnd how about one more for good measure.

Holy. Fuck.

As John braced his arms and prayed like hell that his legs continued to hold him up, he stared down at Xhex as she crouched at his shitkickers, her gunmetal-gray eyes low-lidded and sexy, her hand wrapped around his arousal, her mouth—

Oh, God, she was going to lick up his cock again.

He wanted to watch. He really did. But more than the incredible visual of her pink tongue taking its sweet time as she tilted her head to the side and looked around his erection—

Wait. What was the question?

Coming. That was the problem. If he added what things looked like down there to the sensations of wet and warm on his sac and on his underside and the would-she-or-would-she-not take his head into her mouth? He was going to orgasm—which, okay, fine was the point to all this, but he didn’t want it to stop.

He needed this powerful distraction. After what had gone down with that civilian, he needed this so-intense-he-didn’t-have-another-thought-option, this total, primordial priority, this incredibly hot nothing-else-matters.

All there was in the world was he and Xhex. Sure, there was a crowd of five hundred humans downstairs, and there was music thumping, and please Lord don’t have Trez come into his own bathroom right now—but none of that really registered. Just like he didn’t think about the reanimation and the fight … and the way Manny had come over in the mobile surgical unit, and John and Blay had loaded the civilian’s corpse into the back still handcuffed—

John popped opened his lids. The instant he saw his mate’s mouth hovering a thin inch away from his head, all the stuff that had come back to him was evac’d out a side door.

Xhex was all that he knew.

She led with her tongue, and treated him to a swirl that made his toes curl, the tip of his erection getting the kind of attention that made his sac tight. Then she sucked him down, her whole throat somehow opening, his entire length disappearing into her lips.

Warmer. Wetter.

And she started to suck.

With her hair so short, there was nothing in the way, nothing tangling around her face or his sex, nothing blocking him from watching everything: The way when she retracted, his shaft glistened in the light from overhead. The way when she came forward, her mouth stretched thin to accommodate his girth. The way she teased him with her tongue when she popped him free of her pressured hold.

It was frustrating not having a voice. He wanted to tell her that he loved this. He loved her. He loved them being together like this, clandestine, semi-public, on the verge of discovery if the Shadow happened to enter his office.

But he wasn’t going to move his planted palms so he could sign. Nope. He’d be liable to fall on her.

The rhythm started slow, and did not stay that way—and he knew she was getting ready to finish him because she slid her hand back onto his shaft. Deep in her mouth. Almost out with a twist of her hold. Down again, her lips touching the skin of the front of his hips. Almost out again, twist of her hand, and a lick this time. Back down, all the way down, the whole shaft inside of her.

It made him think of the other places on her he could get into. Leave something of himself behind.

Faster now. And he had to close his eyes again because goddamn, as much as he wanted to come, he didn’t want to come. The suspension between the hyper-charged almost-there and the sweet sting of release was an addiction that was deadly.