Goblin tried to wedge himself between our legs halfway through and AB broke away laughing.
“Cockblock,” he told the dog fondly.
Goblin wagged his tail, unrepentant.
I leaned into AB’s side, heart full, mind clearer than it had been all day.
When we finally headed back toward the safe house, AB murmured, “Let’s get inside. The others will want to get started soon.”
“They’re going to interrogate him now?”
“Nope,” he said, still grinning and I blinked up at him.
“Then what do they want to start?” But as soon as I asked, I knew the answer and the playful way he waggled his eyebrows told me I was right. “Are you guys going to rock, paper, scissors it?”
He laughed, that deep, warm timbre that sent butterflies bursting through me. “Maybe. Maybe we’ll go for poker again…”
Then he shot me a sly look.
“Or maybe we’ll just go in and find a bedroom and not mention it and let them come find us?”
“God, woman, I really do love how you think.” He dropped another fierce kiss on my lips. “Don’t ever leave me, Gracie. Cause you really do get me.”
“I promise.” Because they got me too. All four of them. “AB?”
“Hmm?”
“Do I ever get to learn your birth name?” I wasn’t gonna say real, not anymore. They were their real selves with me.
He shot me a sidelong look. “I’ll think about it.”
“Well,” I said with a little skip. “That’s not a no.” Maybe orgasm denial would net it for me.
Oh, now there was a thought.
He eyed me again. “Not sure I like that look on your face.”
“What look?” I turned wholly innocent eyes up at him.
“Don’t like that one either.”
I was still giggling when we made it back to the safe house.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
GRACE
It took nine hours for Dvorak to finally crack.
Nine. Hours.
Eleven if you counted the two hours after dinner they’d left Dvorak to stew in the dark silence of the reinforced laundry room. Then, hours involving him sweating through the zip cuffs, hours of Bones and Voodoo tag-teaming him like it was a sport, nine hours of me sitting in the corner looking deliberately bored out of my mind. That last part was actually the hardest—holding still, holding quiet, pretending the whole thing wasn’t picking at me like sandpaper under the skin.
The best part of it all was studying how they worked the man’s arrogance against him. Bones paced in front of him, arms crossed, muttering insults in that deadpan way that made them sound like clinical diagnoses. Voodoo followed it with his brand of slow-burning menace, talking almost softly while he poked holes straight through Dvorak’s defenses. They didn’t rush. They didn’t need to. They’d both smelled blood in the water from hour one.
Legend and AB were in reserve. AB would research any data we received and Legend just made silent appearances with food or drinks for us. He played the role of manservant in hisown way. Each time he came and went without so much as acknowledging Dvorak whether he was speaking or not, seemed to agitate the man even further.
