Flipped Henry Finch onto his back.
I was straddling his waist, seated firmly on a cock that had grown even harder in the space of a single second. He looked surprised, then delighted, then hot. His hands stayed on the mat, fingers digging in.
I raised my arms overhead like a boxing champion. “Delilah Barrett for the win!”
He laughed, the vibrations echoing up my thighs. In the flip, his tee-shirt had ridden up a half-inch, exposing a sliver of ridged abs. I stood up as quickly as I could—before I planted my palms on his chest and ground myself against him. It would have been so fucking easy, so fucking good. At the height of sneaking around with Mark—stealing kisses in the hallway or making out in elevators—I hadn’t felt as achingly turned on as I did in this single moment.
“I told you,” Henry said, bouncing up and off the mat. My neck craned to maintain eye contact as he regained his height. “I’m just a librarian. I have no skills.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” I said lightly. “You’re incredibly skilled.”
“Not compared to you.”
“Different skills,” I clarified. I threw a few, silly shadow boxes his way and he ducked, laughing.
“They are markedly different.” We were both still grinning—I hadn’t felt this light-hearted in a long time. “And I do have talents you’re not aware of, wife.”
I smirked at that, attempted to ignore the rush of heat his words sent through me. “Cocky husband.”
My fists lashed out again, but this time, he caught my wrist. Tugged. I fell against his chest easily. One arm tightened around my waist, trapping me, while his hand gripped my face. Eyes wide, lips open—I could only stare up at him in absolute adoration.
“What…what are you doing?” I panted. Henry was dropping his mouth low…then lower.
“Delilah,” he whispered, and I could hear his restraint. We weren’t kissing—not even close—but if I’d pushed up on my tiptoes our lips would have connected. And I wanted to—I wanted to. He was too warm, too sexy, too hard, too charming. And this ghosting of Henry’s mouth, inches from my own, felt magnificent.
“Maybe this is all a trick,” he said, repeating my taunt back to me, “to lure you into a false sense of complacency.”
His eyes sparkled with humor.
“I see the student has become the teacher,” I said airily.
“Except I don’t want to stop these lessons.” He pinned me with a look overflowing with honesty.
Codex’s office door creaked open, and Henry let me go, clearing his throat and waving to our coworkers. Freya was yawning, bun messier than usual, eyes bleary behind her glasses. Abe was immaculate in his suit.
“I’ll make an educated guess that Delilah won,” he mused, flipping on lights and beckoning us to follow him into his office. We did, obedient as schoolchildren. Freya yawned again and leaned into me for a hug.
“Mark was there last night,” I said, giving her a big squeeze.
She reared back, brow furrowed. “Do you need someone to help hide his body?”
“Delilah threatened to put her stiletto in his face,” Henry said.
Abe arched his eyebrows at me. “Not with Victoria around, I’m assuming?”
“Please, I’m a professional.”
Freya snorted, reaching into her bag. “You deserve this gift I brought you even more.” It was a greasy breakfast sandwich from my favorite food cart. My stomach growled at the smell.
“You’re an angel,” I said. “Victoria confirmed our invite to the gala,” I said, relaying the details from the night before: Francisco’s anger, Victoria’s revealing comments, Mark, my faint.
Behind Abe, Freya had hung a whiteboard on the exposed brick wall, where she was keeping track of the various online personas she kept active online. Her notes were scattered, filled with underlines and exclamation points and a short-list of suspects that also could have taken the Copernicus.
In the middle of the board was our countdown.
Days Until Copernicus Exhibit: 13
Freya was listening enthusiastically, biting her nails like I was telling a ghost story. Abe sat impassive, expression neutral.
“Francisco called me this morning,” he said when I finished, drumming his fingers on the desk. “He wanted to convey his disappointment in the two of you last night.”
I rolled my eyes.
“At which I repeated what Delilah said to him, only with a few extra choice words.”
“You’re not worried you’ll piss him off? That he’ll drop our contract?” Henry asked.
“Francisco and I have known each other for a long time,” Abe explained. “I understand what he’s going through. But I reminded him that we have a higher case close rate than the FBI’s Art Theft department and he’d be advised to let us work the way we work.”
My eyes fell back on the countdown. 13 days.
“He also wanted to let me know that the FBI have brought in a suspect.”
“Wait, what?” I asked, leaning forward.
“Obviously, they won’t give Francisco the name. But since you were just mingling with Victoria last night, I think it’s safe to assume it’s not her.”
“What does this mean?” Henry asked.
Abe cast his eyes over at me. “Either the FBI has the right suspect, and we’ve been chasing the wrong one. Or vice-versa. We won’t know unless the person is formally charged.”
“But the book’s not back yet?” I said.
Abe shook his head. “No manuscript anywhere. It cannot be found.” He paused. “Doesn’t necessarily mean they have the wrong suspect though.”
“At the end of the day though, that’s what we want, right?” Henry said. “We want the book back. Who cares who finds it?”
Abe and Freya shared a bemused look at my expense. Henry had barely been here three months and yet he was more comfortable with the gray area Codex operated in than I was.
“The book is the most important,” Abe said. “Always.”
“And at least the FBI can actually arrest them,” I grumbled, knowing I was picking at an old argument that wasn’t going to go anywhere. It would have been hard—but not impossible—to find my way into another police unit. But the experience had left such a nasty taste in my mouth I had hoped becoming a private detective would quench my thirst for chasing down bad guys—but without the bullshit of an office environment, the pesky red tape and bureaucracy. And in so many ways it did, especially after two years of it.
But my job was no longer to arrest, handcuff, charge, or jail. That was not within Codex’s purview.
“Unless they have the wrong person,” Abe shot back. “Last time I checked, we were chasing down a strong lead.”
His faith in me felt like too much pressure, especially in light of what he’d told us.
What if it was all a bad instinct—Mark all over again?
“I think we’re chasing the right lead too, but all this trust-building is taking time,” Freya interjected. “Not that the two of you aren’t doing a great job,” she added. “But time is not our friend here. You two need to get into her private collection. Like immediately.”