“Goddammit.” My head dropped to the wet machine, fingers clenching in a soaked dress. I could care less about clothing, but my research, the evidence, my computers were essentially my entire business, my entire life. Abe’s hand landed on the top of my head, stroking lightly.
“This is a very real fucking message,” he said. “People could have been hurt. Or worse. This isn’t a lame attempt at mugging us to make us feel unsafe. If we don’t listen, I don’t think their next threat will be one we’ll be able to ignore.”
I looked up at him from my squat. His fingers sifted across my forehead. “Bernard is scared.”
“Very much so.”
“So we can’t leave now.”
He gave me a half-smile. “Glad to know I’m not the only foolish one in this partnership.”
“No, sir, you are not,” I said. A very un-Abe-like fabric caught my eye. “Is that a Hawaiian shirt?”
His hand left my head. He rubbed it once down his face. “A going-away gift from my team. They thought these shirts might lead to romance.”
“You’d never wear this,” I teased.
“I swear it,” he replied.
“You packed it anyway?”
The slightest blush lit his cheeks. “It was their gift to me. Of course I would bring it.”
The way this man restrained his emotions incited a tender ache in my chest. “How about that romance?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. Our kiss. That kiss. “Romance has found me on this trip. Unexpected, to say the least.”
Now I was blushing. And blushing hotter when my fingers uncovered a soggy book beneath the shirts. “Wed to the Pirate Captain?” I read.
“Another gift,” he grunted.
I peeled open a page, aimed a discerning smile at the man standing over me. “You intrigue me, Abe Royal.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
He held eye contact, and I finally realized I was kneeling. In front of Abe. Whose expression was equal parts lust and a growing affection.
“I don’t mean to bring us back to—” he started.
“Of course,” I said, startled. “Of course, we, uh… we need to talk to the police.”
I stood up, righting myself, re-orienting my body away from his.
“We need to inventory the damage,” he said. “And I’m going to suggest when the manager comes back that we share whatever room he has available to us.”
“Uh, what?”
His face softened. “Twice now we’ve been directly threatened in our rooms. They’ve followed us here, lit our rooms on fire, delivered missives beneath our doors. We need to stick together for safety, and we need them to list us under aliases. Eudora doesn’t believe our undercover names anymore, but I have no idea if, or how, she’d be able to discover our legal names. Either way, I want neither of them listed on the hotel’s guest register. Especially if there’s someone working here we can’t trust.”
“Abe.”
The man in question swallowed, looking uncomfortable. “Yes, Sloane?”
“We almost lost a source because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other in a public restaurant. How the hell will we abide by our no fucking rule when staying in the same room, in the same bed?” My breathing was already rapid at the thought of it—from anticipation, from worry, from sheer arousal.
“We’ll make sure they have a trundle bed,” he said, a distinct roughness in his voice.
“Two people can fuck in a trundle bed.”
“Sloane.” Even rougher.
“We’re just… Abe, I think we’re in the most danger because we’re the closest to our target. I want to be safe. I want to stay with you, I do. Our rule has to stay.” I paused, scraped the bottom of the barrel for my last shred of willpower. “Right?”
“Right,” he said. “Yes, absolutely. The auction is in seventy-two hours. We’re not animals.”
No, we weren’t. But we’d been prepared to fuck like two people with no common sense or rational thought, and if that didn’t make me an animal, I didn’t know what did.
“Exactly,” I managed.
“Unless my being in a room with you is too unpleasant or uncomfortable, then obviously we can—”
“—no, I want to,” I interjected. “I guess… I guess the thought of being in a room alone right now is even scarier. We need… we need to be able to strategize and stay focused.”
“Focused,” Abe repeated.
“On the case.”
“Of course,” he replied.
We stared at each other for far too long, chests rising and falling. I fully understood the danger we were embarking upon. Except not being in constant eyesight after everything that had happened felt more dangerous.
A dance of painful emotion rippled across his normally stoic face. “Listen, I believe I need to—”