She’d been a bundle of nerves ever since they’d landed, and those nerves had only gotten worse after Reece had split off from the group to follow those armed men. The only thing she could do now was to drown herself in the pleasure she knew Nash could give.
Without breaking their kiss, they turned in a dizzy, sex-drunk loop, half tripping over each other’s feet, hands tugging at clothing and flesh until finally Nash shoved her hard against the wall. Fairchild’s hip bumped a console table beside her, jostling an expensive-looking china vase. She saw it totter in the corner of her vision, then tumble over the edge.
“Oh!” she gasped.
A huge hand dipped and caught the vase mere inches from the floor. It wasn’t either of Nash’s hands. Both of those were clamped firmly on Fairchild’s ass.
Dutton.
The quiet Merc lifted the vase and gently set it back in its place, unharmed. A faint smirk twitched the corner of his bearded mouth.
“Careful,” he said. “You break it, you buy it.”
“Shit,” Nash said, laughing. “We can afford it.”
That was technically true. The Guild had provided them with virtually unlimited funds for this mission. They were supposed to be a wealthy polycule, after all. Their story was that they had earned their fortune in spider-silk, an industry Reece had acquired some knowledge of from his parents.
Naturally, the Guild was footing the bill for the lavish suite where Fairchild and her teammates would be staying—and it was indeed lavish, now that she actually bothered to take a look around.
The place was freaking huge, bigger than any barracks Fairchild had ever called home. The design was an open concept—a spacious central room, with a sunken lounge, granite-topped wet bar, and floor-to-ceiling sliding glass windows overlooking the resort. Doors branched off into other, more specialized rooms—kitchen, dining room, bath—and a grand curving staircase swept upward to a second balcony level. Everything was so wide-open it made Fairchild’s skin crawl, and her mind immediately started computing potential strong points where she might defend against an attack, from the entrance, from the windows, from the various rooms.
At last, she let her attention settle on the bed. It was not tucked away discreetly in its own separate room, as one might expect, but rather it occupied a central place of honor in the main area of the suite, surrounded by cameras, some of them positioned on tripods, others mounted on a metal framework suspended above.
Fairchild’s heart started thumping faster.
This was the one factor her training had not prepared her for. Aboardthe Allura, she and her teammates had practiced every position they could think of, every tempo, every mood. Hard, fast, slow, deep, you name it. She had taken them two and sometimes even three at a time, and she had done it all with a smile. But there was one key difference: they’d been doing it alone.
Now they had an audience.
Granted, there had also been an audience of sorts that very first time in the briefing room, but that had been different. She’d known that Barnes and Lennox weren’t getting off to her performance. Now, there was no telling what kind of perverts would be watching.
And there was a possibility one of them would be Slayn.
“So,” Dutton said, not even slightly breaking character. “Would you like to take the grand tour, or…?”
Fairchild shook her head and forced a smile.
“Later,” she said. “Bed.”
Dutton chuckled softly. He looked incredibly handsome with those glasses on, and his smile helped to ease her tension ever so slightly. He glanced at Nash.
“Why don’t the two of you get the bed warmed up for me?” he said. “I’m going to take a quick spin around the place, make sure it will suffice.”
Nash grinned broadly. “With pleasure.”
The younger Merc swept Fairchild off her feet—literally—and flung her over his shoulder. Fairchild squealed in response. Itwas not a sound that came naturally to her—squealing was childish, and she hadn’t really had much of a childhood—but she’d been working on her squeal over the past week, and she felt she had honed it to something that sounded relatively convincing.
Nash certainly seemed to like it. He rumbled hungrily, and carried her toward the bed, one strong hand squeezing her butt through her dress. Fairchild reached back and pulled off her high-heels, letting them clunk to the floor with a practiced carelessness.
When they reached the bed, Nash threw her down on the mattress, and she landed with a bounce. She swam her arms across the smooth, satin covers and stared up at Nash as he removed his coat.
She was trying her best to ignore the cameras.
Half her mind was following Dutton as he strolled around the suite, studying everything through the lenses of his designer glasses. To an outside observer, he probably looked like an ordinary resort guest taking in his surroundings, but Fairchild knew what he was really doing. He was using the Guild-modified glasses to study the electronics hidden behind the walls, searching for traps. He went over to the wet bar and began examining the bottles.
Nash crawled onto the bed and kissed her, and she let herself melt into the satin. His hands were on her thighs, pushing up her dress. She lifted her hips, letting him push the fabric all the way up to her waist. She wasn’t wearing panties.
Above her, one of the cameras whirred and shifted its angle.
