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He spun her around, the movement fluid and graceful, like they had done this dance a thousand times before, knowing each other’s movements without ever saying them aloud. It wasn’t his business who she kissed, hadn’t been his business in nigh on over a decade, and yet Hanna felt like she couldn’t keep the truth in a second longer, not when Ash was the reason they all seemed to be sharing a single dance, not when Ash was the thing that she and Nicco both seemed to understand best in the world.

Ash pulled her in close, until she was pressed against him, all of him, in the most decadent and sinful way. The silk of her dress and the wool of his tuxedo made a heady kind of barrier between bare skin, making Hanna feel that much more feral, like she wanted to tear at the fabric between them until she had earned the more intimate touch.

“Did you kiss him?” Ash whispered in her ear, his tone so dark it flooded her veins like whiskey on a cold mountain night, warming her from the inside out. It wasn’t anger in his words, but something else, part envy, part…ache, like he only wished he could have been there with them.

Or perhaps she was only imagining that, only wishing it to be true, her mind invaded with the filthy fantasies Nicco had whispered to her in the dark.

What would Ash do with the both of them at his feet?

Hanna’s breath caught at the unbidden image and her response came out on a whisper. “How did you know?”

Ash laughed, throaty and rich, the sound reverberating through their close bodies. “Because look at you…” he bit out. “And look at him.”

Hanna glanced across the dancefloor then. Nicco had found a seat at a small bistro table and was watching them with his heavy, hooded eyes over the rim of a whiskey glass. His legs were crossed and he had the air of indifference about him that she knew to be an act from his normal subtly.

“You both clean up well,” Hanna managed, because there was something so fucking heady about Nicco’s eyes on them while they danced. “It’s…distracting.”

Ash chuckled. “You’re hardly one to talk, Hanna. You should know the real reason I didn’t want you to come tonight… I saw you in this dress and…”

“And what?”

Ash shook his head. “I don’t think we should do this. We have to stay focused.”

She wanted to push him about the dress, but she knew Ash, and when he decided to shutter the blinds, there was no getting inside. “Will you be focused?” she asked, a sudden tendril of worry creeping up her spine. “You’re not going to go all caveman and punch your best friend for kissing your sister…”

Ash glared at her. “I told you before, Hanna. Nothing I have ever felt about you even resembles sisterly affection. Don’t take the coward’s way out.”

Because he always knew how to call her bluff, and Hanna could admit that she threw the word around to keep some necessary distance between them.

“Fine,” she whispered, leaning into his spin. “But you’re not going to punch him, right?”

Or me?

She was a cop. Noticing things was part and parcel of the job.

More than that. She had known Ash at his rawest and most vulnerable, and there were certain things that were difficult to ignore.

Ash sighed. “I’m not going to punch him,” he muttered. “Now, perhaps we should get back to the matter at hand.”

End of conversation.

Hanna nodded. “Five minutes,” she whispered.

And then she slipped off the dance floor.

Chapter Thirteen

Ash watched Hanna walk up to Nicco and tried to think about the specs for the new transmission he had coming in for his bike. The tuxedo Jinx had delivered to Hanna’s house after she and Nicco had left for the gala had fit perfectly—because of course it did—but that meant there was barely any room to breathe when his cock swelled and throbbed.

He walked over to the bar and ordered something, he wasn’t entirely sure what, and downed it in a single swallow, overrun with distractions and dangerous thoughts that he’d been so sure were buried deep and safe, and now seemed to be bobbing along the surface of the water for anyone to grab.

Not anyone. Hanna.

Hanna, who was the only other person in the world who had ever known him as well as Nicco, and Hanna who was knocking on the door of his last secret truth. She had never been a woman to let a locked door stand in her way.

Which was no doubt why she had been so keenly watching his expression when he guessed at her source of sudden distress. Of course, she wouldn’t want an intimacy with his best friend to further complicate their relationship, he could appreciate that. But it was so much more. It was her admission, just after the fact, like she didn’t want to keep a single secret from him, and it was the wrong kind of envy stirring in his veins, a pulsing hot need to be with…both of them.

To be with both of them.