Chapter Three | NOA #2
“Sweetheart, if I touch you, you won’t be thinking about my hand.”
The heat that shot through me was sharp, filthy, and immediate.
I leaned across the table. “You’re very confident for a man in maiming range.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. Came back up.
“I’ve had a good run.”
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then he picked up the bill and stood.
I hated how badly I wanted to follow.
***
The St. Julian at three-thirty in the morning was all marble, glass, and white flowers arranged in vases tall enough to have their own security detail.
Torin stepped through the revolving door first, saw the lobby in one sweep, then let me cross beside him. The night manager looked up from behind the desk with the polite expression of a man paid not to recognize trouble when it walked in wearing smoke and attitude.
“Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to The St. Julian.”
Torin put a credit card and ID on the counter. “Calloway. Late check-in.”
The manager typed. His eyes flicked once to me, then to the screen. Professional. Brief. No curiosity he was willing to be caught having.
“Yes, Mr. Calloway. We have your reservation. One king, fourteenth floor.”
“One room,” I said.
The manager’s fingers paused.
Torin looked at me, delighted. The bastard.
“That’s right, Mrs. Calloway,” he said.
I smiled at the manager with every bit of warmth I didn’t possess. “My husband likes making arrangements without consulting me.”
The manager’s face went blank in the practiced way of hotel staff witnessing things they didn’t get paid enough to remember.
Torin leaned one forearm on the counter. “My wife likes pretending she doesn’t enjoy complaining.”
I slid my gaze to him. “My husband is about to enjoy sleeping in the hall.”
Torin’s smile widened. “She says that when she’s tired.”
“I say worse when I’m rested.”
The manager cleared his throat and placed two key cards in a small envelope. “Elevators are to your right. The restaurant is closed, but room service begins again at six. Please let us know if you require anything else.”
“Thank you,” Torin said.
I took one of the key cards before Torin could take both.
His eyes gleamed. “There’s trust.”
“There’s pattern recognition.”
We crossed the lobby together.
The elevator doors closed on marble, lilies, and the manager’s heroic effort not to watch us leave.
The room was on the fourteenth floor. Torin checked the corridor before he let me reach the door, then took the key card from my hand despite my look.
“I can open doors,” I said.
“I know.”
“And yet.”
“And yet I like being the first thing danger sees.”
The sentence hit low, under my ribs, exactly where it had no business landing.
Inside, the room was expensive in a way that pretended not to be: floor-to-ceiling windows, white pressed sheets, a king bed centered under a low upholstered headboard, a marble bathroom, a vase of lilies by the glass.
The city spread below in fog and amber light.
The bay was a blacker dark beyond the towers.
One bed.
Large. Immaculate. Impossible to ignore.
I put my duffel on the chair and unzipped my jacket. The drive sat in the inner pocket, zipped and warm from my body. Torin watched the movement.
“You counting my pockets now?” I asked.
“I count anything people are trying to kill us for.”
“That was almost reasonable.”
“I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”
He crossed to the windows, checked the locks, the sightlines, the street below. Then the door. Then the bathroom. Then the adjoining wall that didn’t have an adjoining door. He moved like the room belonged to him until he decided it didn’t contain a threat.
I moved like I didn’t notice the way his shirt pulled across his back.
“Bathroom’s yours first,” he said.
“Was that an order?”
“It was a courtesy.”
“Your courtesies have control issues.”
“My control issues are why you’re alive.”
“My instincts are why I’m alive.”
“Your instincts and my driving. We make a fine team.”
“We make a public disturbance.”
“That too.”
I pulled a clean shirt and underwear from my duffel. No sleepwear. Of course. I had packed while a dead prosecutor’s name was coming through my television and Claudia’s texts were stacking up on my phone. Pajamas hadn’t made the list.
Torin looked at the clothes in my hand, then at the duffel.
“No sleepwear,” he said.
“I’m impressed you can identify absence from across a room.”
“You packed in a hurry. You’ve been in the same gear since Strand. Your duffel’s too light for more than basics.” He gave me a look that dragged heat straight under my skin. “And if you had something else to sleep in, you’d have already used it to avoid wearing mine.”
“I’m not wearing yours.”
“You will.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I usually am.”
“You’re also usually unbearable.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“People are trying to kill me.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
I should have walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
Instead, I stood there while Torin reached behind his neck and pulled his shirt over his head.
The movement was casual. Deliberate, but casual enough to deny in court. One second he was armed, arrogant, and fully dressed. The next he was standing under the soft hotel light with his dark hair mussed, his chest bare, and his body cut in hard, disciplined lines from shoulders to abdomen.
The tattoo on his ribs caught my eye first because it wasn’t where I expected ink to be. Fine Latin script curved along his side.
Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus.
Pray for us sinners.
Of course he had that on his body. Of course he did.
My gaze moved before I could stop it: the ridges of his stomach, the dark trail low on his abdomen, the waistband of his jeans, the kind of torso that made bad judgment feel less like failure and more like a calling.
Torin watched my eyes dilate.
The show-off knew exactly what he had done.
He held the shirt out to me. “Problem solved.”
I didn’t move. “You aren’t serious.”
“I’m very serious. It’s clean enough.”
“You were wearing it.”
“And now you can.”
“That isn’t how laundry works.”
“No, that is how forced proximity works.”
I took the shirt because leaving it in his hand made me feel like I was losing, and I didn’t lose.
The fabric was warm from his body.
It smelled like cedar, laundry soap, smoke, and skin.
Pandora’s box had nothing on Torin Dempsey’s shirt. One second I had a manageable attraction problem. The next, some lust demon had crawled out from under the lid and started making suggestions with teeth.
Torin’s mouth curved.
I pointed at him. “Don’t look pleased with yourself.”
“I’d never insult us both by pretending otherwise.”
“You’re a walking lawsuit.”
“I’m a walking solution.”
“You’re a hazard with abs.”
His grin turned wicked. “You noticed.”
“I’ve got eyes.”
“You’ve got a lot more than that, sweetheart.”
I went into the bathroom before I made a bad decision with mine.
The shower was glass and marble and hot in under thirty seconds. Smoke washed out of my hair. Heat loosened the tight line across my shoulders. I stood under the spray with both palms flat on the tile and tried not to think about the man on the other side of the door.
That lasted less than ten seconds.
Torin Dempsey wasn’t the kind of man I picked up when I wanted something simple. He wasn’t forgettable. He wasn’t convenient. He wasn’t someone I could leave before sunrise and reduce to a decent body and a bad idea.
He was armed, arrogant, too observant, and currently the only person between me and the people burning down buildings to get what was in my jacket.
He was also exactly the kind of trouble my body seemed eager to make worse.
Absolutely not.
I changed into underwear and the clean shirt, then pulled his T-shirt over it. It fell to mid-thigh. My hair was damp around my shoulders when I opened the bathroom door.
Torin stood by the window in a fresh dark shirt.
Apparently he did pack more than audacity.
He turned.
His gaze hit me and stopped.
Not long. Not crude. Worse. Controlled. Specific. His eyes moved from my wet hair to his shirt on my body to my bare legs, and his jaw went tight enough to make my pulse kick.
Then he looked back out at the city like he deserved an award for restraint.
I crossed my arms. “You look like you’re having a medical event.”
“I’m having several thoughts I’m too professional to say out loud.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“These are better thoughts.”
My thighs pressed together before I could stop them.
His eyes dropped.
He saw.
Of course he saw.
The air changed.
I pointed toward the bathroom. “Your turn.”
“In a minute.”
“No, now. You smell like a house fire and bad decisions.”
“Bad decisions smell better on me than most men.”
“That sounds like something you practiced in a mirror.”
“I don’t need practice.”
“No, just supervision.”
His grin came slow.
If he had crossed the room then, I might have let him. Or I might have bitten him. The problem was that both options had started to sound related.
Instead, he picked up his go-bag and went into the bathroom.
I breathed again once the door shut.
The bed waited in the center of the room, smug and unavoidable.
I didn’t get under the covers. I lay on top of them with the drive still zipped in my jacket pocket, the jacket folded beside my hip under my hand.
The gold bracelet on my wrist caught a strip of city light, the little cat charm frozen mid-stride, as if it knew better than to stop anywhere for long.
The shower started.
I stared at the ceiling.
When Torin came out, his hair was damp and darker, his shirt changed again, his feet bare. That shouldn’t have been the detail that got me. It did. Bare feet made him look less like a weapon and more like a man, which was worse.
He noticed me noticing.
“Careful, Noa.”
I turned my head. “Careful with what?”
“You’re looking at me like you’re deciding where to start.”
“You’re delusional.”
“You’re not denying it well.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re furious.”
“I can be both.”