document, leaning her back against the wall of intel. “I heard Ocho and Axel talking about a big job Cruz has been promising recently. I don’t know what it is yet, but Cruz hasn’t mentioned it to me at all.”
Rafe stared at her, his mind calculating the fastest way to fix that problem. “I need to get one of the guys alone somewhere. I’d only need a few minutes, just long enough to interrogate the son of a bitch under a trance.”
She was shaking her head even before he finished talking. “I’ve done that.”
“You have?” He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t surprised—and impressed. “Which one did you question?”
“All of them, including Cruz.” She arched a brow. “What do you think I’ve been doing with them all these months, just beating them at pool and pretending I don’t despise drinking rot-gut whisky with them?”
He chuckled. “You’re incredible, you know that?”
She smiled. “That’s what you kept telling me last night.”
Yes, it was. He’d meant every word too.
And he had to be some kind of asshole for the way he still craved her, even considering that this time tomorrow she would be in Order custody and wishing she’d never met him.
She was so confident and fearless in normal situations, it was hard for him to reconcile the fact that she had been untouched until a few hours ago.
Until him.
“You are an incredible woman, Devony.” He approached her and gently cupped her face in his hands. “Last night was incredible.”
She nodded, and he couldn’t deny himself the pleasure of one more kiss, even though he cursed himself for taking it from her with a clearer head than he had a few hours ago. And still the feeling of her lips brushing softly against his sent a torrent of jagged desire through his veins.
He groaned and pulled away.
“This isn’t a good idea. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this to you again.”
“Do it to me? I kind of thought we did it together, Rafe. I mean, I may not have a lot of experience in this area, but I thought we did it together really well.”
She came toward him now, her eyes glittering with sparks of amber and the determination he was swiftly finding irresistible.
“I think you and I do a lot of things really well. Too well to keep doing them on our own.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This.” She gestured to the walls around her, all of her work over the past five months. All of the heartache and loss she had channeled into her pursuit of the ones who hurt her. “We want the same thing, don’t we? To see the end of Opus Nostrum. Neither one of us is going to rest until those bastards are no more. So, why don’t we do it together?”
He glanced between them, where she now extended her hand to him. “Together?”
“As a team. As partners. What do you say, Rafe?”
He knew damn well what he should say. That his loyalty was already spoken for. He had a team of partners counting on him back in D.C., as well as the brethren he hoped to rejoin as soon as possible at the Boston Command Center. Until his mission was completed, he didn’t have room for anything, or anyone, else.
He should have told her all of that last night, before he let the situation with her get so far out of his control.
As much as she deserved to know the truth, until he spoke to Lucan Thorne and Sterling Chase, he couldn’t breach the Order’s faith in him by divulging his continued role as a warrior.
And there was a selfish part of him that didn’t want Devony to hate him.
Not last night, and not right now, when she was looking at him with such open trust and affection.
“I’ll have your back and you have mine,” she said, still waiting for his answer. “Do we have a deal?”
Rafe looked at her, swamped by respect and admiration, and something deeper that he didn’t want to name. Of all the things he owed her in the short time since they’d met, this was the one promise he could give her. That regardless of his obligation to the Order, he would do whatever it took to keep her safe. That much he could commit to without reservation, and with full honesty.
“Okay,” he said, the word like sandpaper in his throat as he took her hand in his. “We have a deal, Devony.”
The Order wasn’t going to like it.
He wasn’t convinced that he did,