He frowned, looking out the window to scan the surroundings. The silence wasn’t tense, not like I expected it to be. We’d survived, as a team. We weren’t supposed to be on the same team, but facing danger, we joined together. And… I liked it, having backup for once, backup I could rely on when it mattered.
But he broke the silence too soon for me to embrace the quiet.
“Do you have some kind of psychic sense of voodoo?” he asked as we stopped at a strip of houses tucked into a quiet village. They looked unoccupied, perhaps like rental units for an extreme vacation option. “You claim to feel when someone is near.”
“No.” I smiled. “I’m just a light sleeper and I feel that sensation of being watched.”
He took my hand as we got out of the Jeep. It wasn’t a controlling hold on me to make sure I stuck with him. It was more like he just wanted to touch me and comfort himself that I was with him.
And I liked it. Dating wasn’t really possible with my career. It wasn’t like I could date the target I was supposed to bring in. But still, for the rest of the night, I wouldn’t overthink it.
I’m only human. It’s been too long since I felt this good. One night of being selfish like this won’t ruin me.
Once we walked away from the Jeep that was hidden under the canopy of low-lying tree branches, we scoped the area for the safest house to break into. He chose the one at the end of another lane, and I looked forward to sleeping in.
It was all I could do as I decided to be selfish and live in the moment with him. I wasn’t betraying my duties. I wasn’t caving to my kidnapper. I was… recalibrating.
Inside, we fell into bed again. It was more like he fell onto me, pinning me in place to fuck me once more. I felt his muscles. I saw how fit he was. But damn, this kind of stamina was going to exhaust me.
In the morning, I woke up in this hideout to the sight of him watching me.
I blinked, a little unsettled by being so exposed and vulnerable to a lethal killer like him. In all my years of dealing with mobsters and criminals, I never imagined cozying up with one like this.
But I had.
And I didn’t want to regret it—yet.
“Sadie Langer.”
Like a mic drop, the warmth of waking up with a rugged lover was gone. It evaporated. Regret snuck in.
All he had to do was say my name, my full name, not the alias on the ID he had to have looked through.
I let my lips tug down as I watched him.
No anger carried in his tone. No malice or annoyance showed from his dark-blue eyes. Stroking my hair from my face as he studied me, he seemed… curious more than anything. But that didn’t make sense. He’d clearly gotten intel from someone overnight.
“One of the Dubinin hackers sent me your file.”
I furrowed my brow. “You had a file on me, specifically?”
He shook his head, caressing my cheek now as he rubbed his thumb over my skin there, like I was a precious find he wanted to take care of and pamper, not preview a file on. “We do now.”
I sighed.
“FBI, huh?”
I nodded.
“Enlisted right out of college.”
“I’m your regular go-getter,” I joked dryly.
“Sounds like it.” He dragged his hand lower to caress my side. With each run of his hand over my hips and then back up nearmy ribs, I wanted to shiver until the soothing touch. “Because you’re a people pleaser?”
I frowned, not liking the fact that he somehow learned who I was at heart.
“A people pleaser because you were orphaned and then hopped around from one home to another.”
