He hadn’t been supposed to be here tonight at all. She would’ve been completely on her own. That didn’t seem to scare her, but it scared the shit out of him.
He pounded harder—lust and punishment and protectiveness rolled tight together.
She didn’t shy away from that, either. Her breath against his throat and her hands gripping his shoulders and the broken sound she made when he hit the right angle—she wanted this just as much as he did.
It was over fast. Too fast. She came first, her body locking around him, her teeth against his shoulder through his jacket, and he followed seconds later with his face pressed into her hair and a groan that he couldn’t have held back with a gun to his head.
They stayed like that. His forehead against the wall beside her head. Her legs still wrapped around him. Both of them breathing like they’d sprinted a mile. The muffled thump ofmusic through the walls. The chemical smell of industrial cleaner and the faint grit of dust on the shelving beside them.
He lowered her slowly. Her feet found the floor. Her hands stayed on his shoulders for a few seconds as he dealt with the condom and fixed her dress. She helped him tuck in his shirt and redo his belt. Small, careful movements in the dark, neither of them speaking.
Reality came back in layers. The earpiece in his pocket. The radio he should have been monitoring. A client somewhere in that ballroom, paying Zodiac to keep him safe, while Isaac was in a closet with the buckle of his belt still warm from her hands.
“I have to get back,” he said.
“I know.”
He cracked the door. The corridor was empty. The fluorescent strip overhead hummed. He checked both directions, then turned back to her.
“I need you to not work tonight,” he said. “Not here. Not while they’re actively looking for pickpockets and want to do violence.”
She was quiet for a moment. He braced for the fight—the counter-argument, the insistence that she could handle herself, the sharp reminder that he didn’t get to tell her what to do.
“Okay.”
One word. No edge to it. He’d never seen her accept someone else’s lead before, and the quiet trust in it hit harder than anything that had just happened against the wall.
She moved toward the door. He caught her hand.
She turned. In the thin light from the cracked door, her eyes found his. Gray and steady and holding something neither of them tried to name. Her lips were swollen. A strand of hair had come loose from whatever she’d pinned it into. She looked wrecked and beautiful and like the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to him.
He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against her knuckles. One breath. Two.
She slipped her hand free. Stepped into the corridor. Walked into the event without a backward glance.
He watched her go.
Then he straightened his jacket, checked his shirt and zipper, put the earpiece back in, and walked the same way.
“Ryder, I’m back.”
“Copy. Everything’s quiet. Endicott’s still at his table. Zero incidents.” A pause. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Isaac stepped through the service door and into the ballroom. The band was playing something with brass. The crowd moved the same way it had before he’d left. Everything looked the same.
And yet nothing was.
