As her name reverberated up his throat, that suction was exactly what he was after, so slick and smooth, so hot that his eyes flared open. With his head on the level, he got a brief hi-how’re-ya of the leather couches, the pool tables, the archway into the foyer. If anybody happened to come in—which was unlikely, given Last Meal—they were just going to see him with his porn face on. Marissa was hidden behind the screen of the bar’s long, high countertop piece. And more good news? His bonding scent was waaaaaay out there, the dark spices so thick, it would serve as a warning that shit was going down in here, and people needed to give them a little privacy.

Marissa rode his head and shaft with her mouth, working him out like he liked it, and he closed his lids again—thinking of the Patriots playing the Giants … what was being served in that dining room … whether Lassiter was going to make them watch The Bachelor or if it was going to be Rachael frickin’ Ray and her EVOO shit.

The image of that bossy little chef was the filter that worked best, blocking some of the sensation—or at least enough so he didn’t come all over his shellan.

Actually, his fear of that outcome worked even better.

Fucking hell, the horror he’d feel if he ever climaxed in her mouth or, God, on her face …

Nope, nope, not gonna happen.

Unhinging his clawed hands from the back countertop, he reached down and gently pushed at her shoulders. “Stop…” he choked out. “You need to stop now.”

The sensations below his waist were getting loud as a detonation—until even with the distractions and the worry, they were about to take him over, submerging him under great waves of high-octane ecstasy.

Gritting his teeth, he grimaced. “Time to stop—time to—”

At the last possible moment, he forced her head away, jerked his hips to the side, and ejaculated all over the cabinets where the big boxes of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish were kept. As he came, she fought against his hold, like she wanted back at his erection, but he didn’t let her go until his hips had stopped kicking and his body was going into a sag.

“You should let me finish,” she said quietly. “You never let me finish you.”

Refocusing on his mate, he drew her up his body, his still-hard cock bumping against her breasts, her stomach, her thighs—

The sound of the vestibule’s door chime brought their heads around—and Butch swallowed a curse. Jesus, how’d he let this happen in such a public damn room? It had seemed like a perfectly acceptable idea when he’d been lust-blind, but this was no place for a lady like her to blow some scrub like him, even if they were mated.

Butch quickly smoothed Marissa’s hair and then started doing up his fly. “We need to take this back home.”

“It was kind of fun.”

“No.”

As Fritz let Xhex and Trez in, Butch yanked himself back to reality.

“…owes me one,” Xhex was saying as she strode in.

“I so do!” Butch called out to her. “Call the chit whenever you want.”

Xhex shot him a wave, then pegged him with a finger point. “I’m holding you to that.”

“You better.”

Butch had to smile, but then he refocused on his shellan. “Let me feed you. And then get you naked in our bed.”

“Good.” She kissed him and then turned around to clean up what he had—

“No.” Butch stopped her hands on the paper towels. “That’s for me to do.”

As he eased her out of the way, he could feel her staring at him, but he ignored it. Where he came from, there were two kinds of women, and his mate was in the worship category.

He should know. He’d had more than his quota of skanks.

The last thing he would ever do was disrespect his Marissa. It would be like burning down a church, taking a knife to the Mona Lisa, and driving a 918 off a cliff for no reason at all.

So, no, she wasn’t going to clean up the nasty he’d left behind.

Marissa had other fish to fry.

As Butch insisted on paper toweling on his own, she got out of his way and shook her head. She had never understood his quirks about sex, but she accepted them. What else could she do? He wouldn’t talk to her about it—whenever she brought up the subject of him pushing her mouth away anytime he was close to climaxing, he shut her down.

Besides, right now that long-running stuff between the two of them was on her back burner.

That horrifically injured female was barely alive after having been operated on—and Marissa had come home only because there was nothing to do but sit outside that ICU room and wait for word that her organs had failed. Or had started to work on their own. God, the surgery had seemed so complicated when the nurse had explained it to her, but fixing her internal injuries and removing her spleen hadn’t taken more than an hour.

Unfortunately, she had lost too much blood, and even after Havers giving her his vein, her vitals were jumping all around.

When her brother had emerged from the OR, he had looked Marissa right in the eye and told her that he’d done the best he could.

And their own personal issues aside, she believed him.

The sad part to all of it, and indeed, there was almost too much tragedy to bear with this case, was that they still didn’t have a name for the female, and no one had called looking for her—Abalone, the King’s First Adviser, had checked the open e-mail box and audience house’s voice mail at Marissa’s request. There had also been no inquiries at the clinic or Safe Place.

The girl was a figurative ghost … on her way to possibly becoming a literal one.

“Shall we?” Butch drawled as he offered her his arm.

Marissa shook herself back into focus and smiled at her mate. “Yes, please.”

Taking hold of him, she walked by his side out into the foyer and entered the formal dining room. After the privacy they’d just had, all the chatter, laughter and bustling was a different social time zone, and she found herself feeling a little overwhelmed. Talk about filled to capacity. Even though the muraled ceiling was high as a kite, and the floor space bigger than a bowling alley, with the forty-foot-long table down the center crammed with the Brothers, their shellans, and the other fighters and members of the household, there was a joyful congestion ot it all.

Two seats were empty on the far side, and they went around to them, Butch settling her in her chair.

As he sat down next to her, he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. “Eat fast.”

“You’d better believe it,” she said—even though she wasn’t hungry.

And, she was sad to admit, she wasn’t necessarily in a big hurry to get back to the Pit, either. The truth was, she’d seduced him because she’d known it was the only way to get her mate to move on from worrying about her.

When a plate of filet mignon was set in front of her by a doggen, Marissa moved things around, cutting up meat that she didn’t try, messing the mashed potatoes, scattering bright green peas. And then she took her glass of cabernet sauvignon and sat back, watching the people, listening to the stories.

“…gonna want me to do?”

Focusing in on her mate as he spoke, she watched as he leaned around John Matthew to put the question to Xhex.

The female fighter laughed. “You should fear me.”

“Anyone who doesn’t is an asshat.”

“You say the sweetest things. And I’m in no hurry to call my chit in. It’s a good thing to have a male like you in my debt.”

For no particular reason, Marissa took note of how powerful Xhex’s body was, her shoulders and torso cut with muscle that was set off by the skintight Under Armour shirt she wore tucked into her black leathers. Between her dark hair that was cut short and her gunmetal gray eyes, she was definitely someone to take seriously.

Meanwhile, Marissa was rocking her office-appropriate slacks and English school marm blouse routine.