Chapter 10
GHOST
Tamsin had migrated across most of the mattress during the night and ended up sprawled half over me, one bare leg tangled through mine and her cheek resting over my heart. Her arm was curled tightly around my chest as though she had caught hold of me in her sleep and didn’t want to let go.
I stayed still beneath her with one arm locked around her waist and felt more settled than I had in years.
She shifted in her sleep, the inside of her thigh sliding higher over mine, and my cock hardened against her hip with enough force to make the thin blanket useless.
Her lashes fluttered before vivid blue eyes opened against my chest. She blinked sleepily, then lifted her head and found me smiling down at her, the last traces of dreams giving way to a self-conscious blush as she registered where most of her body was sprawled.
Color began moving beneath the freckles across her nose before her gaze dropped to the hand still fisted in my shirt. “You look very pleased with yourself.”
“You climbed on me in your sleep.” I tightened my arm when she tried to shift away from the erection pressed against her.
“I was unconscious.” Her brows drew together as though that should settle the issue, although the blush spreading over her cheeks said she had become acutely aware of the hard length against her hip.
I gave one shoulder a lazy lift. “Still counts.”
She muttered something beneath her breath and planted a palm on my chest to push herself upright.
The movement dragged her thigh across my cock and pulled a low sound from the back of my throat, making her freeze with her mouth parted.
I caught her waist and brought her back down.
She decided she needed to put half the room between us.
“Where are you going?” I asked, letting my thumb move once over the warm strip of skin exposed above her shorts.
“The kitchen.” Tamsin tried for matter-of-fact, but her eyes kept dropping toward the blanket tented between us.
“Too far.”
A sleepy laugh escaped her despite the way she pressed her lips together as though encouraging me might have long-term consequences. The sound loosened something in my chest and made my cock throb harder. Apparently, every part of her had been designed to make self-control unnecessarily difficult.
My phone vibrated across the nightstand before I could persuade her that coffee could wait.
Stryker’s name was displayed on the screen, and I released Tamsin only after sliding my hand down the curve of her hip to her ass and giving it a possessive squeeze that turned the pink in her cheeks several shades deeper.
She pulled the blanket higher as I stood, but her gaze followed me toward the door and paused on the erection straining against my jeans, giving me enough satisfaction to carry into the hallway.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“No clean signature on the incendiary. Could be one of the two local bombmakers we know who take contract work, but the build was simple enough for somebody with pyrotechnics experience. Cipher’s digging into them, as well as every Bellamy property and everybody tied to the shared credentials.”
“Anything move overnight?” I leaned against the wall and looked through the open bedroom door, keeping Tamsin in sight while she sat up and tried to tame her hair with both hands.
“Nothing we caught. Warehouse stayed quiet. You still with Tamsin?”
My mouth curved as she glanced toward me. “Keepin’ her real close.”
Stryker made a sound that resembled amusement.
“Figured.” Then he was all business once again. “Call when you have something new.”
The line went dead, and I returned to the bedroom as Tamsin swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The oversized shirt she had slept in slid high enough to expose most of her thighs, and she tugged the hem lower when she caught me looking.
Her chin lifted in a silent challenge even while the color in her cheeks deepened.
“What can you tell me?”
“No maker’s signature on the fire device.” I crossed the room to stand between her knees. “We’re checking a couple of men who build for hire and everybody tied to Bellamy’s shared access. Warehouse and your other properties stayed quiet overnight.”
“So we still don’t know who made it.”
“Not yet.” I hooked one finger beneath her chin and tipped her face up, enjoying the change in her breathing when I stepped even closer. “But we’ll figure it out.”
Tamsin studied me before nodding, not asking about the club’s methods of finding that information. Her easy acceptance of the boundary made me want to put my mouth on her, but she slipped off the mattress before I decided being late to the warehouse was worth it.
We managed coffee, food, and clothes without me bending her over the kitchen counter, though it came close when she went on her toes to reach into an upper cabinet.
Her sleep shorts climbed over the rounded curve of her ass while her shirt stretched across her tits, and my hand closed around the edge of the counter hard enough to whiten my knuckles.
Tamsin glanced over her shoulder, caught where I was looking, and nearly dropped the travel mug she had been reaching for.
I stepped behind her, put one palm on her waist, and took the mug from the shelf with my other hand.
Her breath hitched when my body pressed along her back, my cock fitting against the soft curve of her ass with no room for either of us to pretend I was unaffected.
I set the mug on the counter and lowered my mouth near her ear, letting her feel the scrape of my beard against the delicate skin below it. “Later.”
By the time we rode back to the warehouse, Tamsin had changed into fitted jeans and a pale-blue shirt that made her eyes look beautifully bright.
She wrapped herself around me without needing to be told, her arms tight across my stomach as the bike leaned through the canyon roads.
Every stop pressed her breasts more firmly against my back, and I spent the ride calculating how many hours stood between me and the moment I could get her home, put her in bed, and finish what I had stopped the night before.
The Bellamy warehouse looked different in daylight after the fire.
Temporary barriers sealed the rear corridor, while industrial fans pushed the last trace of smoke through open loading doors.
Black Crowns prospects held visible positions at the main entrance, loading dock, and side access, checking employees against a list and issuing temporary badges carrying individual names.
The building had finally acquired the kind of accountability it should have had before somebody used shared access to set part of it on fire.
Tamsin stepped through the entrance, with me at her back, and immediately began turning the undamaged front office into a temporary audit room.
She had surviving records moved to folding tables, assigned two employees to sort them by year and job number, and sent another pair to recount sealed material under direct supervision.
An older field supervisor approached with a carton of transfer forms. “Where do you want these?”
Tamsin glanced up from the list in her hand. “Sort them by property and put the current year on the table beside me.”
He nodded and carried the carton where Tamsin had directed without questioning her or looking to me for approval. Clearly, my message yesterday had been received.
She kept her attention on the paperwork until he walked away, then looked at me from beneath her lashes with gratitude mixed into a warning not to enjoy myself too much. I smiled because she had already learned that warning was usually wasted effort.
Some employees were nervous around the cuts stationed throughout the building, so I kept my tone easy while moving boxes. I asked who usually closed after large jobs, how they handled dead badge batteries, and whether supervisors ever borrowed access cards.
A warehouse lead felt relaxed enough to admit that people traded credentials more often than policy allowed. “Half the staff knows the code to the rear keypad.”
He winced when Tamsin looked up from across the room.
Fucking hell.
“Why?” she asked, setting down her pen.
“It saved time when somebody forgot a badge.” The man rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Operations knew. We were supposed to change it every month.”
“When was it last changed?” I asked.
He gave me a sheepish look. “Six months ago, maybe.”
The answer put them five changes behind. I kept smiling because the man talked more freely when he thought I found the lapse mildly ridiculous instead of dangerous, but it took a lot of fucking effort.
Tamsin’s lips flattened, quiet anger flashing in her eyes as she realized how many habits had turned a controlled-material warehouse into a building people entered through convenience and shared memory.
A younger technician admitted temporary crews sometimes saw shipment schedules taped near the dispatch desk.
“This shit just gets better and better,” I muttered at one point, low enough that only Tamsin could hear.
Another supervisor said closing responsibility shifted depending on who finished the last return, making it impossible to know who should have locked the rear door after a particular job without checking time sheets.
The access pool widened to include permanent staff, temporary workers, drivers, supervisors, and anyone who had spent enough time near the office to learn the company’s shortcuts.
Tamsin moved among them with a clipboard against her chest, asking direct questions and refusing vague answers without raising her voice. Each time she passed close, her arm brushed mine or her hip grazed my thigh, and my body reacted as if the contact were deliberate foreplay.
When she bent over a low carton to retrieve a folder, the denim stretched over her ass, and my cock hardened so fast I had to reposition the box in my arms before anyone noticed where my attention had gone.
She straightened and caught me looking. Her blush rose, but she held out her hands for the box instead of retreating. I kept it and stepped close enough that the corners pressed lightly against her stomach. “Tell me where it goes.”
Tamsin’s gaze dropped to my mouth for a quick moment. “Table by the wall.”
“See?” I moved past her. “Teamwork and all that shit.”
Cipher arrived near noon with a laptop. He matched Tamsin’s saved field sheets against the final reports pulled from Bellamy’s system, adding time stamps to the paper pattern we had already found. Tamsin submitted one set of numbers, and the operations system later produced higher usage totals.
“Her originals are consistent,” Cipher agreed, turning the screen toward us. “Changes hit after submission. Shared operations login, same as the access group. Could be any one of several people.”
Tamsin leaned over his shoulder, one hand braced on the table while she studied the dates. Her hair fell forward in a wild curtain, strawberry tones catching beneath the overhead lights as she traced one line without touching the screen. “Can you tell which terminal?”
“Two of them,” Cipher replied. “Office and warehouse. Credentials won’t fucking narrow it unless I find something else.”
“Thanks.” The corner of her mouth turned up as she reached for another box.
I took it from her and watched her cheeks warm again. “Where do you want this, pretty girl?”
She pointed toward the temporary records office and walked ahead of me, the sway of her hips making the weight in my arms feel like a useful restraint. I followed because the position let me watch the room and her at the same time. And staying close enough to reach her had become instinctive.
By early afternoon, the surviving files had been sorted, the recount was moving under Tamsin’s supervision, and Cipher had flagged every post-submission change he could find.
Tamsin sat at the edge of a folding table, comparing a transfer packet against a list from another Bellamy property, then frowned and flipped through the pages again.
I saw the moment she decided something was missing by the way her shoulders tightened and her fingers stopped halfway down the sheet.
“The original transfer packets for these loads are at our other storage property,” she muttered, sliding off the table. “The copies here don’t include the receiving signatures.”
“We’ll collect them.”
Tamsin glanced toward me as she gathered the pages into a folder. “That was remarkably easy.”
“You haven’t told me how you planned to get there.”
Her eyes narrowed with immediate understanding, and she pointed through the open loading door toward her truck. “We can take mine.”
“Fine.” I took the folder from her and tucked it beneath one arm. “I’ll drive.”
“You really do compromise,” she murmured in a dry tone, falling into step beside me with exaggerated wonder.
“Fuckin’ beautifully, pretty girl.”
Tamsin shook her head and walked a few paces ahead, sunlight catching in her hair as she crossed the lot.
I let my gaze travel down the line of her back to the curves packed into her jeans, already imagining those hips in my hands while she rode me instead of my bike.
For fuck’s sake. It was like my brain had lost complete control over my dick.
My eyes swept the parking lot when a flash beneath her truck snapped every thought into cold focus.
The glint came from the front passenger side, too clean to belong beneath a vehicle coated in road dust. A dark housing sat tucked against the chassis where no factory component should have been, nearly hidden unless the sunlight struck it at exactly the angle I had caught.
My smile vanished as Tamsin reached the rear quarter panel.
“Stop.”