Chapter 17
The elevator ride up from the lobby took approximately three hours.
Or that was what it felt like, with Dario's shoulder brushing Frederica's every time the ancient cab shuddered.
The smell of him—smoke and aftershave and expensive whiskey—was still in her lungs, the taste of him in her mouth.
The ghost of her lipstick was stamped faintly across his mouth in the mirrored panel above the buttons.
He hadn't bothered to wipe it off, wearing it instead like a trophy.
Frederica tried to think unsexy thoughts and stared straight ahead at their warped reflections in the cheap chrome.
Her hair was still loose from the museum, curling around her shoulders and down to her waist. The black dress clung in places where her clothes usually didn't, and she was trying not to feel self-conscious about it.
Dario, on the other hand, looked like he was coming off a movie set with an open white shirt rolled to the elbows, tie hanging undone around his neck, jacket draped over his shoulder, the line of his throat gleaming with sweat, her lipstick painting lust all over him.
Unsexy thoughts. Unsexy thoughts, Frederica urged, the toe of her boot tapping impatiently.
The elevator jolted to a halt at their floor with the finesse of a truck hitting a pothole. The lights flickered, and the car shook. Frederica hit the door button until it opened and stepped out into the corridor without waiting for him.
Dario's footsteps were unhurried behind her, that easy panther prowl that looked casual until you'd seen him take a man apart in four seconds flat with the same ease.
Frederica wanted a shower. She wanted silence. She wanted, annoyingly, to feel Dario's hands again, big and hot and braced at her waist, while she kissed him like she had something to prove.
Her keycard nearly snapped in half between her fingers as she shoved it into the slot. The light turned green, and she shouldered the door open hard enough to make it bang against the stopper.
The door closed behind them with a soft, final click, and it was just the two of them and her pulse drumming in her ears. This had to stop. She had to pick a fight and get him mad so she wouldn't go near him. Her hands balled into fists, hating herself before she even started.
Dario tossed his jacket onto the small sofa, and his tie after it.
"Well," he said. "That was—"
"You could have been shot."
It came out sharper than she meant, the words knifing across the small space between them. He blinked once, then leaned against the back of the sofa with his arms folded, eyebrows arched.
"But I wasn't," he said mildly.
Frederica slammed the security chain across more loudly than necessary. Her hands needed something to do that wasn't aiming for his throat. Or his belt. Not necessarily in that order.
She turned on him. "I said a distraction, not flipping tables and screaming. You drew every gun in the room."
He shrugged. "And every eye."
"That's the problem." The volume of her voice climbed, adrenaline refusing to let go now that the job was over. "You painted a target on your chest, Colleoni. They could have dragged you into the police station, where I would have had to come and break you out."
His expression didn't flicker. "It worked, didn't it?"
"That isn't the point."
"The point," he said, pushing off the sofa slowly, "is that in the time it took me to be loudly and charmingly unbearable, you got that pretty little box out of the place you had been cornered into, didn't you? I saved your ass, just like in Crete. You're welcome, Spartana."
She wanted to hit him. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to wipe that lazy certainty off his face and also press him back against the wall and see exactly how lazy he was when she had her hand between his legs.
"It was unnecessary," she snapped instead. "I had it under control."
"Ah, sì, of course." His mouth curved, not quite a smile.
"Frederica Alesci, who is never surprised, never cornered.
Who definitely didn't need a diversion when the head of security suddenly showed interest in why one of the waitresses looked like she could snap him in half and decided to go find her.
Just be a big girl and admit I saved your ass. "
She had the graceless realization that he had seen more with the guard than she thought. He had been across the hall, playing drunk idiot, and somehow still knew why the guard's plan had deviated. He always saw too much.
"My ass," she said, every word flint, "is none of your business."
He took another step towards her, and the air pressure in the room changed. She could feel him, his body heat, before he was even within arm's reach.
For a split second, she thought that was it. He would back off, deflect with a joke, go shower, and leave her be. This stupid fight over nothing would be over, and she could go be embarrassed in her room.
Dario's eyes dropped, very briefly, to her curves under the too-tight dress, and when they came back to her face, his mouth moved faster than his judgment.
"Trust me, Spartana, saving your ass doesn't even make the top ten things I want to do to it."
Silence. He seemed to realize what he'd said about half a second after she did. His eyes widened minutely. The words hung in the air between them like a live wire.
Frederica's pulse went somewhere high and reckless. "Is that so?"
The left corner of Dario's mouth twitched, slow and wolfish, like he had decided there was no point pretending he didn't know what the stupid fight was really about.
"Pretty sure," he said.
Her breath felt too big for her lungs. She didn't fuck colleagues on active operations. She didn't let herself get driven by adrenaline into bad decisions with men who smiled like sins and kissed like...like he did.
Frederica could list all the reasons it was a bad idea. She just couldn't remember any of them while looking at him.
"Say thank you," he said softly.
"For what?" Her voice came out lower than she intended, full of that same humming current. Such a bad idea.
"For saving your ass," he insisted. "Say 'Thank you, Dario, for saving my perfect ass.'"
Her chin went up. "I don't say thank you for things I could have done myself."
"You're right." He hummed in annoyance. "You don't ever say thank you for anything I do for you, like getting you out of jail. Or making you dinner multiple times. Or not telling your parents that you leave me bullet casings with love hearts carved into them."
They were three paces apart now. Two. She should step back. Turn away, break the line of sight, go into the bedroom, shut the door, lock it.
She swallowed. "You're an idiot," she said.
"True." His mouth tipped up, faint and lopsided. "But I'm an idiot who got you and your holy trinket out of there in one piece."
"Do you mean the reliquary or are we still talking about my ass?"
"Both."
Frederica should have laughed. That was the usual rhythm: barb, retort, smirk, retreat. Instead, she heard herself say, "You think that doing your job and creating a distraction tonight earns you something?"
"I would have settled for a thank you," he said slowly. "But now I want to know what's on the table?"
She reached over, looped a finger around his belt buckle, and yanked.
He came forward with a low, surprised sound. His chest bumped hers, solid heat through the thin fabric of the dress and his open shirt.
"What's on the table is that I fuck your brains out," she said, giving him her sniper's stare.
"But don't for a second think that tonight is anything more than a hook-up.
I don't do feelings. I need to burn off some of this post-job adrenaline, and I can do it with you, or I can find someone else if you can't handle being a one-time thing. "
"Cute that you think it's going to be me that can't handle it being a one-off," he replied and pinched her chin gently. "I only have one question. Gentle or rough?"
"Rough," she said, grabbed him by his shirt, and yanked him down to her mouth. He made a startled sound against her lips that turned into a groan.
He tasted like adrenaline and the dregs of the whiskey he had drunk earlier, sweet and bitter and familiar. She bit his lower lip hard because she wanted to see if he'd flinch. If she was going to make this mistake, it would be on her terms, with eyes open, armor on, and teeth showing.
He didn't flinch. His hand slid to the curve of her jaw, thumb pressing just under her ear, angled her head, opened her mouth with his, and went all in.
He didn't kiss like a charming distraction. He kissed like he actually cared what she was feeling. It should have annoyed her, but instead it made her hotter and wetter. His tongue stroked against hers, and she shivered, furious at her own body for betraying her.
"Turn around," he murmured against her mouth.
She pulled back, breathing harder now, her lipstick smeared across both of them again. "Giving orders, Colleoni?"
"Trying to," he said, and there was that grin again, wrecked at the edges, making it even more perfect. "You don't listen very well."
"Fuck you." Frederica turned, presenting him with the zipper at the back of the dress.
The room felt smaller with her back to him. His fingers brushed the nape of her neck, gathering her hair and lifting it away. He did it infuriatingly gently. As if she were something that could break.
"Don't do that," she said before she could stop herself.
"Don't what?" His breath was warm against the exposed skin of her neck.
"Be careful with me."
He laughed low and deep. "You want me to work on being more of an asshole?"
"It's not that."
Dario kissed her neck. "Tell me what you mean then."
"You know what it's like being bigger and stronger than everyone else. You always have to hold back, afraid of accidentally hurting someone. I have to do that with other people too, and I hate it."
Dario went still behind her, and Frederica knew she had hit the mark. She turned her face to his.