I couldn’t remember. I’d been concentrating on Nate, not random cars. “It’s not very likely to have been him, is it?”
“It’s our guilty consciences at work,” he said, with an attempt at a grin. But his eyes were worried.
The incident put a bit of a damper on our visit to yet another old building. “Look,” I said firmly when we returned to the car. “If it was him, then he was just checking up on what we’re doing. If they knew for sure what we’ve been up to, James would have confronted us.”
“Yes, but what’s worrying me more—if itwashim, how did he know where we were?”
I licked suddenly dry lips. “You think he’s planted a GPS or something?”
“It’s ridiculous. Iknowit’s ridiculous,” Nate said. “They’re just a normal dragon family, not Jason Bourne.”
True, but money bought access to a whole lot of things that weren’t available to the rest of us.
I began to reason it through. “He doesn’t know where you keep your car, so he can’t have planted anything on your car. Your phone’s always with you, so he can’t have—”
“Unless he’s hacked my tracking app,” Nate said. “It’s there in case my phone gets stolen.”
Shit.“Delete it.”
“Do you think he’d have been able to do that?”
“The Fortescues use hackers who can breach a fuckingbank’ssecurity measures. Delete it.” Something deep inside me was quivering. For the first time, I realised the seriousness of what we were doing and what the outcome could be.
Nate paused with his finger over his screen. “If I delete it immediately after Steven thinks we could have spotted him, they’ll know that we know.”
“Oh, God.” I banged my head back against the headrest. “I amnotcut out for a life of espionage.”
“We’re being honest about where we’re going, so it doesn’t matter if they do follow us,” Nate reasoned.
“Except for the river and flying. I don’t like the thought that they know where we go.”
Nate drew in a sharp breath. “No,” he agreed. “Perhaps—tonight, let’s go somewhere different, and I’ll leave my phone at the house. It could look a little suspicious, but it could equally be accidental.”
“Honestly, I’d prefer their suspicions to the prospect of being interrupted when we’re just about to—” I broke off. That had been a bit of an assumption.
“Yes,” Nate agreed, and his eyes darkened as he looked at me. “Me too.”
NATE
I knew I had my priorities all wrong. Feeding the Fortescues’ suspicions just because I wanted sex with Alex was both stupid and irrational. But I was tired of being rational. IwantedAlex.
It appeared that he wanted me, too. Or at least, he wanted sex with me. I had to be careful not to confuse the two things.
“Shall we find a pub somewhere for lunch?” I asked him. I didn’t feel like going back to the Fortescues’ city yet.
He agreed, and we headed away from Bath into the countryside, where we discovered a riverside pub with a good line in local beers. After a lingering lunch, I had recovered my perspective. It was highly unlikely that James would have taken Steven into his confidence—Steven was neither astute nor discreet. Which meant that it had almost certainly been a coincidence.
Spending time with Alex had killed my last trace of anxiety. Something about Alex meant laughter was never far away. Especially when he laughed so hard that he snorted when the pub cat—impervious to the threat of dragons—swiped the last piece of beef from my plate.
Once we returned to Bath, we ambled around the city yet again rather than heading back to the Circus. We needed to kill time so that it would be dark when we reached the river, but I was growing increasingly impatient. I didn’t want to wait any longer to get Alex naked.When I looked at him, I usually concentrated on his face and his eyes, because his laughter was like cocoa on a cold winter night. But every inch of him was gorgeous—his faded jeans showed off his arse and thighs, and his jumper clung to a chest that I now knew to bedeliciously muscled.
The minutes crawled by as I watched him, cataloguing the way he’d occasionally moisten his lips, just a hint of tongue showing and rendering me almost helpless with need. But finally, it was time to head back to the Circus so we could give our apologies for supper and I could leave my phone behind.
Turning on the spot, perhaps a little too eagerly, to head up the hill, I spotted a camping goods’ shop.
“Feeling a sudden need for a tent?” Alex asked, following me inside. When he saw what I pulled off the shelf, his sarcastic comments ceased.
“Headlights would attract attention, and I want to watch you while I suck you,” I murmured to him as the cashier rang up the battery-powered lanterns and waterproof-backed rug.
