She stormed away, dumped the contents of her file bag on her workstation. And while the cat watched them both warily from the sleep chair, began to update her board.
“I want no one bleeding for me.”
“It’s not about what you want.”
“Clearly.” With a precision that would have met Feeney’s approval, Roarke smoothed the patch over the tracker. “What was has been dredged up inside me, and some of it stings more than I’d like. Add to it, I’ve spent my life avoiding what I’ve just done to myself. A man’s entitled to complain after a solid kick in the balls.”
“I don’t like it, either, and I don’t have balls.”
“Metaphorically, you’ve the biggest, toughest I know.” He crossed to her. “Everyone you just threw at my head, with some justification, matters to me a great deal.”
“I know that.”
“If he finds a way to harm any of them—”
She spun around. “Will he get to you?”
“Not in this life or any.”
“Then trust me and mine to do our jobs.”
“I do. I am, or I wouldn’t be wearing this bloody thing, would I? Neither of us would. And you needn’t requisition one for Summerset.”
He took her shoulders before she could explode at him. “It’s my own make you’re using, so I’ll see to it. He’ll have one on him in the morning. My word on it.”
“Fine.”
He tightened his grip before she could turn away again. “Understand this. I swear to you, a man could hold a blaster to my head and not have me agree to wear this damn thing. Only you.”
She tapped her arm again. “Back at you.”
He smoothed his hands down her arms. “And it’s elbow.”
“Whose elbow?”
Despite it all, his temper just drained. “It’s your ass from your elbow, not your ear.”
“What’s the difference? They’re both body parts that start with e. At least your ear has a hole in it.”
He dropped his forehead to hers. “Christ Jesus, I love you.”
Resentment, and he’d sparked plenty of it, slipped away. She put her arms around him.
A crap day, she thought, for both of them. Just a crap day all around.
“You’re already half-undressed,” she said, and sighed. “I’m never going to get to work.”
She lifted her head, found his mouth, took it.
Need, she thought as the kiss went quickly hot, quickly deep.
For and from both of them.
So she gave what he needed, took what she needed as they stood in front of murder and loss.
She rolled her shoulders when he released her weapon harness so it fell to the floor with a thud.
They followed it, a tangle of limbs.
Heat pumped again, the sort that churned need to urgency. His hands, quick and skilled, dragged the T-shirt up and away, peeled the support tank off so they could claim her breasts.
When he rolled her, his mouth staked that claim as his hands grazed down her torso to unhook her belt. She arched under him, thinking: Hurry, hurry, hurry. She wanted him inside her, trapped in her, lost in her.
She tugged his pants down as he tugged hers. The fingers of one hand dug into his hip as she gripped his hair with the other, pulled him back up so her mouth could feast, just feast, on his.
“Don’t wait,” she told him as she bowed up again. “Don’t wait.”
He couldn’t have.
All that had been, that was, that might be swirled inside him. She was the answer, the only true thing, the reason.
Inside her, with her body a hot whip of demand under his, nothing else existed. In the wild beat of her heart, he found his own. Nothing and no one could match what she brought to him, what she gave to him, what she took from him.
When she cried out, he felt an almost savage thrill that he had ripped that release out of her. He made her shudder, he made her go limp.
So he slowed, pressed his lips, gently now, to the bird-wing beat of the pulse in her throat to take her up again. Now with love outpacing need the pleasure spun, spun, spun out for both of them until he let himself spill into the open heart of it.
She lay quiet, stroking his back. She knew they had to surface, deal with the reality of what they faced. She could wish it otherwise, but the world refused to be locked out for long.
“Just another moment,” he murmured. “This—not the sex, but this—is why we go through all the rest, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t always. I guess it is now. This one’s too close to home, Roarke. Neither of us are going to sleep easy until it’s done.”
“We won’t, no. And still.” He sat up, drawing her with him so they sat, still tangled. “I would put either of us up against him. Together? He has no real concept of what he’s facing. Not only because we’re smarter, and we are, or because we have all those resources. But because of this.”
He took her hand, gripped it. “Because of this.”
“Then let’s use it.”
“I’m wearing the shagging thing, aren’t I?”
“And not much else.” She started to smile, then had a horrible thought. “It doesn’t track, like, what we just did. I mean, that kind of movement.”
He made a noncommittal noise as he rose, and again drew her up with him.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“I believe I did, and quite well. It’s doubtful they’re monitoring that … minutely, we’ll say.”
“God, God, God! I’m not going to think about it.” Reaching down, she grabbed clothes, started to dress. “It’s messing with my head, and I have work.”
“We have work,” he corrected, and began to dress. “Tell me what you want me to focus on.”
“Coffee,” she muttered and strode to her command center. “I need coffee.”
“We.”
“Right, we need coffee.” She programmed a pot. “As soon as Summerset sends me his stops today, I’ll have uniforms tracking that, talking to merchants, clerks.”
She huffed out a breath. “Unlikely we get anything, because he used an amplifier, but we check. I have files, more inclusive and extensive now. Probably not that much in them you don’t already know from your own monitor and more recent dips into the alphabet soup, but you could take a hard look at his known associates. Anything you can add there is good. New York associates in particular.”
“All right.” He poured two large mugs.
“I figure if he intended to come to New York, do the hit, leave, he’d book a hotel or an apartment. Downtown, in the area of Modesto’s residence. Upscale because that’s what he goes for. But probably not one of yours because he wouldn’t want to put money in your pocket.”
“Good point, and we’ll agree on that. So you’re looking for a single male booking. And for a quick job like this, it would be a hotel.”
“Right. I’ve got a team on it, but you can give that a skim if you want. But he’s changed his mind, right? Not booking out right after the hit. More extended stay, and, as in his dreams he wants to take at least one of us to play with, more privacy.”
“He’d want a house, single residence, or a duplex that’s well soundproofed. But he’d try for that single residence first. And furnished. He doesn’t have time to get a decent bed and so on.”