a delicate weight settled over his hips, it felt like part of the dream.
The blade against his throat did not.
Rafe jerked into full consciousness, every muscle in his body tensed against the need to move. The weight on him was light enough to be easily dislodged, but any movement would get him cut to ribbons.
Especially since it was Dani straddling his hips. “Well,” he breathed. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I came in the window.” Her words were casual, but she didn’t move her knife. “Your security here could use some work.”
Their security was admittedly laxer than it could have been—Conall was still making do with the supplies Rafe had been able to procure—but they had motion sensors and cameras. Plus, Rafe’s room was on the third floor of the warehouse, with a perfectly smooth wall and no convenient trees or cover nearby.
Not exactly a rational thing to ponder with an armed assassin straddling his quasi-interested dick. “Did you stop in to give me security pointers, or did you just miss me?”
Her eyes went dark, more stormy gray than blue, and she leaned forward. “You’re still here.”
“In my bed? Yeah, it’s where I tend to spend my nights. If I don’t get any better offers.”
“You’re still here.” Her frown deepened. “In Atlanta.”
“Yes.” He settled his hands on her waist carefully, freezing when the blade seemed to tremble against his throat. “Are you here for an apology?”
“What? No.” She flipped the knife up and slid it into a sheath strapped to her thigh. “I thought you were smart.”
“That is not the impression you gave me.”
She made a soft noise in the back of her throat and climbed off of him. For someone wired to move fast, she took her time as she wandered slowly around his room, silently trailing her hands over the boxes of supplies stacked against the far wall.
He could almost feel her fingertips as she ghosted them up the side of the painting Tessa had made for him. The moody landscape showed a collapsed building being swallowed by kudzu under a night sky blazing with the greens and purples of a particularly brilliant aurora. There were no identifying geographic details, no way to trace the artwork back to his baby sister in her safe, anonymous little corner of Atlanta …
He still wanted to tear the painting off the wall and hide it. Dani always saw too much.
Instead, he threw back the covers and forced himself to be casual as he hauled on his discarded jeans. “This is the oddest break-in I’ve ever experienced. Did you want something? To borrow a book? To shiv me?”
She didn’t answer, just continued her circuit around his room.
“If you’re looking for the valuables, I keep them under my pillow.”
She idly flipped the cover of a book on his desk open and shut as she studied the painting on his wall again from a distance.
A thread of frustration unfurled. Rafe was usually good with people. And he’d fallen into a rhythm with Dani—a give-and-take of friendly insults, a glorious game they were playing together. Under any other circumstances, the game would have ended in his bed.
Instead, their game had been abruptly cut off by betrayal.
Maybe there was only one way to come back from that. Trust.
“My baby sister painted it for me,” he said softly. “Her name is Tessa. It’s not safe for me to have pictures of my family, or anything that might lead the Protectorate back to them, but she wanted me to have something to remember her by.” Rafe swallowed hard. “Not even Knox knows their names or where they are. He just knows I send everything I can back to them.”
Dani hopped up to sit on his desk and finally looked at him. “So you’re not smart. Not at all.”
It was so bluntly her that a reluctant smile tugged at his lips. No, Dani wasn’t going to melt at a display of vulnerability, even if it was earnest. If anything, vulnerability would piss her off. She was made of hard edges and feral protectiveness …
And she was here, getting irritated at his lack of self-preservation.
Oh, shit.
Dani was feeling protective of him.
Rafe hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and relaxed into a lazy smile. “If I didn’t know better, cupcake, I’d think you were worried about me.”
“Of course I am.” She said it without a hint of shame or embarrassment. “Staying here is suicide, Morales. I thought you wanted to survive. Otherwise, why would you have bothered burning my crew? Burning me?”