Jayne Castle - After Glow

"Yeah?" He traced a design on her nape. "Come to any conclusions?"

"I'm still doing the research." The hair was stirring pleasantly on the back of her neck now. "I expect it will take me a while. I plan to do a lot of extensive tests."

He removed his fingers from her skin, walked deliberately around the sofa, and stopped on the opposite side of the low table. He regarded her with a disturbing intensity.

"So long as I'm your only test subject, I don't mind a lot of extensive research," he said. "But if that's not going to be the case, I need to know now."

Something hard and grim had slipped into his voice. She knew him well enough to know that he rarely used that tone, at least not with her. She swallowed uneasily.

"Emmett?"

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all, just cool and determined. "This probably isn't the right time for this conversation but given the circumstances, we're going to have to have it soon so we might as well get it over with tonight."

She stilled. "Are you talking about a trip to the dentist or our relationship?"

His smile was brief and humorless but at least his hard mouth curved slightly. "Our relationship."

"I see."

It was a subject they had both managed to avoid discussing openly. After all, they were only a few weeks into this affair, she reminded herself. They were still exploring new ground here. There had been no need to rush into decisions or commitments. There were issues. No one had said anything about love. They needed time.

Blah, blah, blah.

But there had also been a couple of underlying assumptions in their current arrangement, at least as far as she was concerned. One of them was that as long as they were seeing each other, neither of them would sleep with anyone else.

Maybe they should have talked about that assumption earlier, she thought.

"The problem is," Emmett continued in that same too-even tone, "because of this situation with Wyatt and the Guild, I'm going to be busy for a while. I won't have time to play the game the way you've got every right to expect me to play it."

Her mouth went dry. "I don't consider our relationship a game , for heaven's sake."

"Bad choice of words. Look, I don't consider it a game, either. But that doesn't mean that there aren't some expectations and conventions that apply to our present arrangement."

She felt the first flicker of temper. "Expectations?"

He moved one hand in a negligent, open-handed gesture. "Flowers, dinners out, theater tickets, long walks by the river. You know, all the stuff that goes with being involved in an affair."

"Sure. Right. Expectations." It only went to show how little she knew about having affairs, she mused. She hadn't even thought about their relationship in terms of expectations. Maybe she had been afraid to look at it in such specific terms because some part of her had been afraid that it wasn't going to last very long.

"What I'm trying to get at here," Emmett said, "is that I won't be able to spend a lot of time with you until Wyatt takes back his old job. I'm going to be tied up in meetings during the day and I'll be working late most evenings."

She sat up on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. "For goodness sake, Emmett, I don't expect you to entertain me constantly."

"I know that." He shoved a hand through his hair. "I'm not talking about entertainment, damn it. I'm talking about making sure that you and I have the same understanding of our current arrangement."

"Arrangement," she repeated neutrally. Something told her that she was going to learn to hate that word.

He gave her a brooding look. "I'm not handling this very well, am I?"

"You do seem to be floundering. Why don't you try being a little more direct? You're usually pretty good with direct."

"All right, I want to be sure we both agree that what we've got going between us is an exclusive—"

"Arrangement?" she finished icily.

"Yes."

"Hey, no problem, London." She gave him her brightest, most polished smile. "As it happens, I'm pretty busy myself these days. I've got my new private client and I'm still working full time for Shrimpton. And then there's this business of trying to figure out why Professor Maltby sent for me the day he died. Yep, I think it's safe to say that I won't have a lot of spare time available to hop into bed with other men."

He rounded the table in two long strides, clamped his hands over her shoulders, and hauled her to her feet.

"If you give a single, solitary damn about me," he muttered, "you won't joke about sleeping with other men."

Stunned by his fierce reaction she splayed her fingers across his broad chest and searched his face. A sense of wonder unfurled within her.

"Are you telling me that you would be jealous if you found out that I was seeing someone else?" she asked cautiously.

"I won't share you with another man," he said in a low, rough voice. "I can't. I'm pretty sure it would make me crazy."

She touched his face with her fingertips. "Oh, Emmett."

"While we're involved in this arrangement," he said evenly, "it has to be all or nothing."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "Same goes for me, London. All or nothing."

The battle-ready tension eased out of his shoulders. He smiled slowly and raised his hands to cup her face. "No problem. You're the only woman I want in my bed. Sounds like we've got a mutual understanding here."

He pulled her close and kissed her before she could get too depressed about semantics. When his mouth closed over hers she felt the hot, urgent need that flowed through him, a need that was harnessed by the self-mastery and control that was so much a part of his nature.

A low rumble made Emmett raise his head. They both turned to look at Fuzz, who was still on the table, circling the milk carton, tatty fur alternately bristling and going flat.

Emmett released her reluctantly. "You'd better do your thing with that trap before your dust-bunny accidentally triggers it." He glanced at his amber watch. "If you hurry, we can still get a couple more hours of sleep tonight."

So much for that passionate interlude. She was jolted by the swift, efficient manner in which Emmett had just changed the subject. Apparently having achieved his objective—assuring himself that she would be true to him while he worked long hours at his new job—he was ready to move on to the next item on the agenda.

It occurred to her that the ability to switch his focus so quickly was probably one of the character traits that had helped him rise to the top echelons of Guild leadership. The skill no doubt made him a terrific CEO but she had a feeling it would prove disconcerting in a relationship.

Make that an arrangement .

But he did have a point, she thought. Time to find out what Maltby had concealed in the milk carton.

"I doubt if Fuzz could spring the trap," she said, turning toward the table. "Back in the early days of underground exploration there were some attempts made to use animals to identify and trigger the illusion snares, but they failed. The psychic vibes of the traps seem to resonate only with humans. Some experts think that's because the aliens set them to resonate with minds that had evolved to the point that they were vulnerable to the downside of creativity and imagination."

"In other words, minds that could be overwhelmed by nightmares, but you don't need him tipping over the carton while you're working on the trap." Emmett picked up Fuzz. "I'll keep him out of your way."

"Thanks." She opened the milk carton again and studied the dark shadows inside. "You know, we're very lucky those intruders we surprised didn't think to check Maltby's refrigerator."

"My guess is they did check it but never thought twice about the milk carton."