Page 74 of Hell’s Weapon

My chest explodes. It’s not butterflies, it’s fucking fireworks, as the ground shifts around me. I meant what I said, whether Tacita wants in on this or not, I want him. I’ll burn my singlehood in the fire and embrace this new side of myself. All the people I’ve been with, had fun with, and even hooked up on the regular, pale in comparison to this. I have a new gravitational pull and it's to the man currently twirling his tongue with mine.

Breaking the kiss when we’re both panting, I lean my forehead to his, our breaths mingling and keeping us in this little bubble for a few more seconds. His fingers brush my abs again and his forehead crinkles with confused lines as he registers the feeling of the card file instead of skin under my scrub top.

He pulls back and mouths the word “what” even though no sound comes out.

“We should get out of here,” I tell him, pulling back so I can gather our things, putting both our bags on my shoulder. “Come back to my room and I’ll show you.”

Milo had lit up like it's Christmas when I showed him my stash from the day’s mission. He’d immediately started pulling out the individual sheets and mapping the new information to the web we’ve put together on my wall.

I’d apologised to him about ignoring him for most of the day, and I prattled on about this and that as he worked. He’d shown me the odd paragraph and we’d worked through it together, fitting more pieces of the puzzle to our existing theories and coming up with a couple of really strong leads.

He seemed to come alive at being able to progress this challenge. His face was more animated than I ever remember seeing. He’d used a mixture of signing and writing to join in with my chatter. He’d also managed to say a few words as we worked.

It was only the odd “yes” or “no,” but it scrambled my brain every time I got to hear his voice.

We also got each other off in the most sensuous round of frotting I’ve ever experienced. Then he let me play with his arse a little when we’d showered afterwards, and I’d gotten him off a second time when he immediately got hard again. This was shaping up to be a fucking great day.

We are both clean and clothed once more when there's a knock at my door. It’s well into the evening now and I was about to suggest we go and see if the canteen was still serving. Jumping off the bed where we’d been sitting together, I pull the door open a crack.

“Is Milo with you?” It’s Tacita. Seffy is also with her but my focus is on the woman currently determined to break half my heart. Her hair is loose, the multicoloured underneath creating a bright halo around her face and shoulders. She does, however, look concerned and I don’t have the will power to toy with her, knowing how unnerved I feel when I don’t know where either of them are.

“Yes, he’s here. We’re working on the game together.”

“May we come in?” she asks almost hesitantly.

“We brought food,” Seffy adds, holding up what looks like a take-out bag.

Swinging the door open, I let them both into my room with a clenched jaw. I don’t want Tacita here if she’s just going to cause more issues but at the same time I cannot deny her, other parts of my body lighting up at seeing her.

I do push in front of them, though, so that I can plant myself back on the bed next to Milo. He's sitting at the headboard end so I’m boxing him in. Tacita takes a seat on the opposite bed.

“Neither of you came to dinner,” she says. It's an observational statement.

“We were busy,” I tell her, stretching my arm behind Milo’s back in a possessive gesture I know she notices. There’s a flash of something in those chocolate eyes of hers. Jealousy? Lust? I am not sure. And it’s petty but I’m glad to see that she looks slightly regretful.

Milo starts signing but Seffy inadvertently speaks his words as she stares at the wall. “You were adding to the timeline.”

Tacita whips her head around and stares, her jaw going slightly slack. “How did you get so many new files in a single day?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I am the best at what I do.” I can’t help myself.

She turns back to me and rolls her eyes, her lips twitching in a smile. Reaching into her satchel, which she must’ve brought with her, she pulls out another couple of manilla files.

“Here, I think you already have one of them, but I have it on good authority that this is the only copy of this one in the game.” She drops one file on the bed next to her but passes the other over the gap.

Milo immediately reaches for it, opening it into his lap. I curl my body around him so I can read it over his shoulder. It is indeed a different profile. One that we’d identified as missing from our collection during our work this evening.

He slips from my grasp and moves to the other bed so he can start adding it to the other information we already have.

“Nice one, where’d you find it?” I ask, content to let the dust settle and hope we have something there to save. We will need to talk more but for now I can live in ignorance.

“The group that’s all guys, they had it. Idiots decided to stash their files in the library thinking that no one uses ‘the old dusty tomes.’” She air-quotes those last four words and laughs.

“What bleedin’ eejits.” I burst into laughter as well.

“Indeed. I overheard them as I was looking some stuff up a couple of aisles over. As soon as they left, I stole their entire stash. The rest I got the dragon shifter to burn as they were duplicates of the ones we already had.”

All three of us go still and blink at Tacita like she’s spoken a foreign language. Seffy is the one to recover her voice first, “One of the guards helped you?”