Page 45 of Fastest Kill

Luckily, Dario didn't ask her to talk, and when he started to do as he promised and gently lick her clean, Frederica was robbed of any ability to talk at all.

19

The next day, the first thing Frederica registered was that she had slept through the night. Not in the shallow, surface-level way she usually managed in unfamiliar beds, one ear always open, one hand always near whatever weapon she had put on the nightstand. She had slept deeply and without interruption for six solid hours, which only happened at home in Rhodes with the sound of the sea through the shutters, and almost nowhere else.

The second thing she registered was the heat source at her back.

Dario was still asleep, his breathing slow and even, his body radiating enough warmth to make the cool morning air from the rattling AC unit bearable. He was behind her, but not touching her, a few inches of space between them, as if they had both, even in sleep, maintained a buffer. His arm was on top of the duvet rather than around her. She didn't know whether that was deliberate.

She looked at the second, untouched bed on the other side of the room.

Right. So that happened.

She sat up. Dario didn't stir, which was ideal, because she could make a clean exit and be showered and armored back in her own clothes before she had the opportunity to do anything regrettable.

She moved carefully, planted her feet on the carpet, and stood. Her body had the pleasant ache of muscles worked hard. She grabbed her bag, crept to the bathroom, and closed the door behind her.

In the mirror, she stared at the marks on her wrists, hips, and throat. She gave herself exactly thirty seconds and shut the door on the feelings that seemed to be fighting to be heard.

Fuck feelings. It was a hookup. The itch was officially scratched, and she could get on with the job at hand.

Frederica ran the shower hot and stood under it until the water pressure, already unimpressive, gave out entirely. She braided her hair back when it was still damp, found clean clothes in her bag, and applied concealer to her throat with more thoroughness than usual.

When she finally came out of the bathroom, Dario was sitting up on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and his hair everywhere. He looked at her, fully dressed and professional.

He was bedraggled and sleepy and so sexy her tender pussy clenched in longing. Fuck.

"Morning," he said huskily.

"Morning," she replied.

A pause of exactly the right length to establish that neither of them was going to be dramatic about it.

"Good sleep?" he asked.

"Fine." She crossed to the desk where the reliquary was still sitting in its velvet bag. "You?"

"Fine." He picked up his shirt from the floor and pulled it on. "We should debrief the rest of the crew."

"Good idea," she agreed.

Frederica ordered coffee and breakfast from room service while Dario showered, set up her laptop on the small table by the window, and made herself look at her emails with actual attention rather than using them as a prop.

By the time Dario came out of the bathroom in jeans and a fresh shirt, breakfast had arrived, and Frederica had organized her notes on the heist extraction into something legible.

She had also taken stock of the decorative prints that had bounced off the wall the previous night and rehung them. She would leave the hotel with extra money to cover the cost of the broken frames. She didn't bother to make the bed, just collected the scattered pillows and linen from around the room and dropped them in a heap on top.

They sat across from each other and ate breakfast in silence.

Frederica drank more coffee and finally said, "The reliquary gets couriered to Serapis today. We should get it out of Ephesus before anyone thinks to wander down to the archives for anything."

Dario nodded. He was back to the easy, unbothered version of himself, the one she could read and predict and hold at a comfortable distance. The other version, the one that had fucked her senseless and pressed his mouth to her shoulder in the dark, had vanished.

"About last night," she began and shifted in her seat.

He raised his eyebrows. "What about it?"

"Just making sure we are on the same page." She kept her voice flat and factual. "It was a one-time thing, and it doesn't change the working dynamic."