“I’m ordering food,” I said, pulling out my phone. “You eat seafood?”
She glanced at me from the window, where she’d been checking the street view. “I eat everything.”
“Good to know.”
I placed the order—crab cakes, octopus rolls, pork entree, enough to make sure neither of us had an excuse to leave tonight. When I hung up, she’d disappeared into her room. The door clicked shut with a finality that felt deliberate.
I stood there like an idiot, staring at that closed door, wondering when the hell I’d become the kind of man who cared about closed doors.
Forty minutes later, I knocked. “Food’s here.”
Silence. Then the door opened, and every coherent thought in my head evaporated.
She stood there in shorts—black, fitted, ending mid-thigh—and a simple tank top that clung to curves I’d been trying not to think about for weeks. Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, those blue strands catching the hallway light. No makeup. No armor. Just her, looking soft and dangerous and completely unaware of what she was doing to me.
My breath stalled in my chest.
“Smells good,” she said, walking past me toward the kitchen.
I followed because my body moved on autopilot when she was near, some primal part of my brain overriding common sense. We sat at the small table, food spread between us like a buffer zone. She picked up a crab cake, took a bite, and made this small sound of appreciation that went straight to my groin.
I shifted in my seat, willing my body to behave. But then she reached for an octopus roll, and a smudge of sauce caught on her thumb. Without thinking, she brought it to her mouth and licked it off, tongue sliding across her skin with casual efficiency.
I nearly groaned out loud.
Heat pulsed low in my abdomen, spreading through my veins like gasoline looking for a match. I gripped my fork harder than necessary, focused on the pork on my plate, on anything except the way her lips moved or how her throat worked when she swallowed.
If I said what I was feeling right now, if I let even one word slip, I’d either kiss her until we both forgot how to breathe, or I’d destroy everything we’d been carefully not building between us.
So I kept the mask on. Ate my food. Pretended I wasn’t hyper-aware of every breath she took, every shift of her body, every time her eyes flicked to mine and then away.
“You’re quiet,” she said eventually.
“Tired.”
“Liar.”
I looked up. She was watching me with those sharp brown eyes that saw too much, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. Not cruel. Almost…playful.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She speared another piece of octopus. “I just noticed. You get quiet when you’re thinking too hard.”
“And you get reckless when you’re comfortable.”
Her smile faded. “I’m not comfortable.”
“You’re eating in shorts and a tank top in a safe house with a man you barely know. That’s comfortable.”
“I know you well enough.”
“Do you?”
She set down her fork, leaned back in her chair. “You’re Russian. You’re ruthless. You hate being told what to do. You fly planes when you need to clear your head, and you watch people like you’re waiting for them to slip up.” She tilted her head. “Close enough?”
Too close. Close enough to make my skin itch with the accuracy of it.
“You missed one thing,” I said.
