He turned, stared right at me, slightly bashful and a little bit too real. I was already unsure if I could truly open myself up to the instant attraction between the two of us. That look on his face convinced me I couldn’t give in. Nine fucking days to achieve the case of my dreams, and the very last thing I could allow was a distraction that would devastate me. Because this man was hotter than sin, brilliant, ambitious, a challenge to my talent in every goddamn way.
One taste of Abe Royal, and I’d never kick the habit. He didn’t have the makings of an anonymous fuck. And I wasn’t made to do anything but.
“Having trouble?” His voice was velvet, low, tempting. “You can’t seem to open your door.”
“Oh, my key card won’t…” I trailed off because he was walking toward me, panther-like, stunning me into silence. He plucked the card from my fingers with an irritating confidence. My back brushed against his chest. His lips landed in my hair. One large hand pressed against the door, turning this banal act into something erotic. Seductive.
“Do you prefer being alone in all aspects of your life?” he asked. With a firm stroke, the key card beeped. My door opened an inch. Abe gripped the handle, holding it still. Holding me in.
“It’s my natural state,” I said, turning my head slightly. I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I’m guessing you don’t let any women into that stone-cold heart of yours.”
A raspy chuckle. “Access is denied to most everyone, yes.”
“What about a woman that devours men’s hearts for breakfast?” I asked, voice barely a whisper.
“Allowances could be made for a woman like that.” He brushed a few wayward strands of hair from the nape of my neck, baring me completely.
I felt his mouth there. A kiss. Almost a bite. A low rumble rose from his chest.
Another kiss, this one on the side of my neck.
One more, lower still.
My eyes closed, soaking in this seduction. Savoring it. “Abraham,” I said, voice a plea.
“Yes, Sloane?”
I steeled my spine and accessed the very dregs of my willpower. Turned my head to the side, and still avoided eye contact. I couldn’t—couldn’t—look him in the eye right now. “I think you and I are smart enough to know the kind of devastation that sex between the two of us could leave in its wake. Complicating devastation. Not an easy night between strangers.”
Oh god, every word of that physically hurt. The casual sexual experiences I had rarely involved more than our first names and a frank discussion of birth control and testing. I’d basically told this man I was too attracted to him to fuck him for fun.
“I am smart enough to know that,” he said. “I am smart enough to feel the same way actually.” He kissed my throat one more time, a searing burn. “And because you were so honest with me, I’ll tell you that I’m also stupid enough to still want this, Sloane.”
“You’re not a stupid man, though,” I said.
His mouth dragged to my ear, and I whimpered. “Generally, I am known for my brilliance, yes. But you’re the first woman who’s ever robbed me of my senses.”
He stepped back, stepped away, and I almost begged again, begged for more, wept at the loss of his masculine strength, and his hard chest, and the confident grip of his fingers.
I finally did catch his eye. There was that shy vulnerability again. My throat was dry, body trembling. “I feel pretty senseless around you too, Abe.”
A smile, a sad smile from him. “I know what’s needed to win a case like the one you have. I know what’s needed from you. The focus, the time, the stress. Please forgive my—” He waved a hand at my door. “—reckless actions. I know you can’t afford distractions right now.”
I opened my mouth to tell him his apology was so unnecessary it was laughable. He unlocked his own door, held it open as he stared at me one last time. “Don’t doubt yourself, Ms. Argento. If anyone can succeed in that man’s capture, it’s you. I’d wish you luck, but I don’t believe you need any.”
18
Abe
What about a woman that devours men’s hearts for breakfast? Sloane purred, slipping first one bra strap, then the other, down the curve of her shoulder.
Allowances could be made for a woman like that, I said, although it was more guttural growl than words. I was naked on my bed, fingers wrapped around my cock, the sole witness to Sloane’s strip tease.
You want me to devour you? She stared at my length, tongue darting out to wet her lips.
Christ, get up here, I begged. She only shook her head, endlessly coy, knowing it drove me up the goddamn wall. Fingers hooked into the fabric, she dropped her bra to the ground. Began teasing at the sheer material of her panties.
Should I keep going? I was so close, so close to seeing everything.
Yes, I demanded. I was going to come. Yes. I was going to—
The ringing crack against my hotel door startled me awake from the hottest sex dream of my life. Gasping, naked, cock aching, I stumbled out of my bed. Glared at the clock, which read 2:15 a.m.
Only silence filled the room.
“Shit,” I sighed, relieved. I sank back onto the bed, scrubbing a hand down my face. The dream—that dream—had been so real I could still taste my desperation, could still feel my skin, hot for her touch. I’d fucking pleaded for her touch, which I’d never, not once, done for a woman.
Instinctively I placed my palm to the wall behind me, the one I shared with Sloane. It slowed my heart to a manageable rhythm.
Another sharp crack shattered the stillness. A third and another. And the unmistakable sound of a doorknob being rattled and jarred—an attempt at a break-in.
But it wasn’t my door. It was Sloane’s.
Not once in my life had I ever run toward a person, yet this woman I barely knew was the one I felt compelled to protect in this moment. Yanking on my briefs, I grabbed my phone, ran to the door and pulled it open. Sloane was already there, eyes wide with fear and hair a tangled mess around her face.
“Abe,” she said. “Oh my god, are you—”
I hauled her into the presumed safety of my hotel room and glanced both ways, caught a blur of movement at the far end of the hallway that could have been anything. Including whoever had just been here, trying to scare us.
Stepping back inside, I slammed the door. Locked it. Sloane had her palm to her forehead, chest rising and falling rapidly. Clutched in her hand was a note.
Beneath my feet was another note. I scooped it up, distracted, then bent to catch her eye. “What happened? Are you okay?”
I sat her on my bed, sank down in front of her to check for injuries. She wasn’t hurt—physically. She was, however, trembling.
“Did you get this?” she asked. I grabbed the note, held up mine to compare. It was a picture of the two of us sitting next to each other at Mycroft’s Pub earlier this evening. The picture was slightly blurred, clearly taken from a secret vantage point. Sloane is laughing at Humphrey.
I’m staring at Sloane with a look of unfiltered devotion.
For a split second, my mortification outweighed my fear—I didn’t need an outsider’s perspective showing me how badly I wanted this woman. Or how badly my pride had been damaged when she turned down my advances just a few hours earlier. She was right—she was right—that sex between us could be complicating and distracting at a time when she needed clarity and focus. Because look at this picture—this picture had nothing to do with overwhelming lust and everything to do with an instant attraction so strong I literally didn’t know what it meant. I was staring at her like she was my goddamn wife walking down the aisle towards me on our goddamn wedding day. I didn’t even recognize the look on my face.
Sloane reached out, wrapped her fingers around my wrist. “Abe.”
“Who took this?”
She shook her head. Swallowed. “There’s a note.”
I flipped the pictures over. In identical spots, in identical handwriting, was written: Get the hell out of London a
nd go home. Next time will be worse.
“We just received a threat,” she said softly. “In our hotel rooms. Which means whoever did this followed us from that pub to this hotel. Could be paying someone who works here to find out which rooms we’re staying in.”
“And followed us to the pub in the first place,” I added. “Unless Humphrey…”
Her forehead creased. “I can’t… my gut doesn’t like him for this kind of maliciousness.”
I stroked my finger across lettering. “I agree,” I admitted. “I’m calling the front desk to report to security first.”
I stood up, dialed. Paced the room to dispel the adrenaline. Sloane let out a long breath, pushed the mess of hair from her face. And looked down at my cock, which was still half-hard from my dream. And growing harder beneath her gaze. Just as the receptionist answered, I realized that I was half-naked, in black briefs, walking around for Sloane’s perusal.
“The Langham Hotel front desk. How may I be of service, Mr. Royal?”
My mouth had gone dry. Sloane, slightly flushed, turned away, stood, and wandered toward my desk and luggage.
“Hello? Mr. Royal?”
“Yes, hello,” I said. “I need to speak with hotel security. Can you send them to room #608 please? The woman staying in #610 and I received threatening letters at our doors at the same time. And in #610, it seemed like the person also tried to break in.”
The reaction from the receptionist was one of shock. I was sure The Langham wasn’t a hotel where threats to their patrons occurred often. She promised to send security as soon as she could as well as a complimentary pot of tea.
As I hung up, Sloane turned around, fingers near my laptop. Displayed on my screen were articles about Bernard, a few documents, and case notes I found myself turning to the past two days. Scratching an itch that made me feel both vindicated and guilty at the same time.
“Security will be here in a second,” I said, grabbing a pair of sweatpants from the ground and tugging them on. “But we need to be vigilant. If someone’s giving out our information, we can’t be sure who to trust here.”
“Smart idea,” she said. “Also we should both be much less naked.”
Which was when I finally realized she was wearing a white sleep shirt that barely skimmed her thighs. Every swaying movement bared the curve of her ass. Her legs were strong, toned. The polish on her toes was a mysterious purple.
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you mind waiting outside my room while I put on real clothes?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. We left my room, and she opened hers—an odd echo of our moment earlier this evening when I’d kissed her neck and asked to come inside.
My cock hardened again, and I gritted my teeth. Sloane went to step inside her room, but I grabbed her wrist. “Wait. We should… check first.”
Blasting the room with light, we checked her bathroom, beneath her bed, inside the closet. Convinced she was safe, I waited with my back turned in the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
A snapping sound of elastic and shuffling. Then, “I thought a man was trying to get into my room.”
My fingers tightened painfully on the wood of the doorframe. “I think a man was. Or at least wanted you to feel fear.”
More muffling, the sounds of water being turned off and on. “I hate… admitting… when I’m afraid.”
I turned my head to the side and kept my eyes lowered. “Fear is our most important sense.”
“Or weakest sense,” she countered. “And you can turn around now.”
I did, slowly. Her hair was now in a side-braid, and she wore black leggings beneath her sleep shirt. Toes were still bare, face still scrubbed of makeup. Face still effortlessly, startlingly beautiful. My desire for her nearly incapacitated me.
“Fear keeps us alive,” I said, voice rough. “Fear is our survival instinct. I’ve known plenty of agents and trainees and PIs in my lifetime who didn’t trust their fear. Didn’t develop a relationship with their fear. And once that sense is deadened, you’re much more likely to take risks, be reckless, put your life on the line when you shouldn’t.”
She stayed silent. Her body was tensing, flexing.
“You’re the furthest thing from weak,” I said.
Sloane nodded and looked behind me where two hotel security guards were approaching. We spent the next ten minutes relaying what happened to the guards, who were more distressed than we were.
“Do you keep security footage of who enters and exits?” Sloane asked.
The guards exchanged a look. “We can take a peek at it for you. They’d have to have used another guest’s room key to access the elevators or the stairwell doors, though.”
“Could a member of your staff have given out this information?” I asked.
The guards exchanged another long look, both grimacing. “We’ve both worked here for years. I’d like to believe our staff wouldn’t do that, but we do have hundreds of employees, some recently hired.”
“Just let us know what you find,” I said.
“And you’ll be fine for the rest of the night?” the guard asked.
“As long as no more terrifying men try to bust down my door,” Sloane said with a sardonic lift to her chin.
“Of course, ma’am, we’ll keep an eye on it,” the guards promised.
The second they left, she turned to me, tugging on her braid. She held up the picture, tapped the message written on it.
“You and I both know who sent this,” she said. I rubbed the back of my neck, leaning against the wall. Acceptance was settling over me, washing away the fear of being attacked in the middle of the night.
“Bernard Allerton,” I said, the name heavy in the room.
But Sloane was smiling—sly, almost excited. “If he’s handing out threats, my guess is he’s scared.”
And before I could stop myself, I returned her smile. “My guess is this means we’re hot on his trail.”
Her brow arched. “We?”
I placed the pictures together, side by side. They were the exact same, down to the handwriting. “We both got these threats. At the very least, we should talk.”
She sat on the end of her bed cross-legged, watching me carefully, like I was a rare butterfly about to float off for good. Silent. I wondered if it was obvious I was fighting my own internal battle, right in front of her. Behind her, I noticed she’d taken over every single flat surface in the room for various laptops, screens, files, and whiteboards. It was like a mobile PI’s office—the only thing missing was a corkboard with pictures of Bernard and red string connecting the dots.
Frozen on her laptop screen was a black-and-white picture of Bernard at an awards ceremony. Next to him, looking young and fresh-faced, was Henry.
My chest actually hurt, looking at this picture and knowing the future that awaited Henry—how deeply betrayed he’d feel, how scared, how utterly taken aback when the crimes hidden within his vocation were fully exposed to him.
If Bernard merely pretended to value libraries and antique books, Henry was the complete opposite. He was so devoted to the preservation of literature it was ingrained in his very soul.
I knew what I had to do now.
“You were right to be pissed at me the other night,” I said slowly. Sloane only tilted her head. Still silent. “I did withhold information that could help you find Bernard. Or at least narrow the search down to a two-mile radius. Potentially. And I saw you looking at my Codex files in my room.”
Now she was reacting, her whole body going taut. “You have a lot of extra years of information-gathering that I don’t have. Won’t have, given my deadline.”
“Ten years, actually.”
Her lips parted. “You’ve been tracking Bernard for ten years?”
I didn’t answer right away, because if I didn’t jump now, I wasn’t going to. “I’ll let you in. Let you have access to everything. Fill in the missing pieces you can’t.”
&nbs
p; “The catch?”
An hour earlier, I’d been dreaming of this woman stripping for me. A woman who was technically my firm’s competition and more than a decade younger than me. A woman who’d enchanted me from the very first second I’d laid eyes on her—and who would remain a distracting, dazzling temptation for as long as she was in my presence.
This was potentially the worst idea I’d ever had.
“When we capture Bernard, I want to be the one to fucking do it.”
19
Abe
Our complimentary tea arrived. It sat untouched as Sloane and I squared off again in her hotel room. I was still seated in the chair by the dresser—barefoot, in sweatpants and a worn Quantico sweatshirt.
She faced me in her chair, elbows on her knees. Serious, focused, enthralled. Her posture was without her usual sultry teasing. Instead she appeared solely interested in catching the same man I was.
My cock noticed, of course. My cock responded to her sultry teasing as much as it was responding to her investigative interests.
“Explain what you mean when you say you want to ‘be the one to do it,’” she said. “Because I’m not ditching my contract for your vendetta.”
“The contract is yours. In fact, any money you get from Louisa for catching Bernard would be yours too. I only want to be in the room, whatever room it is, when he’s found.”
Her eyes searched mine, concerned. “I have an objection to not paying you if we partner on this.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s…” She rubbed her palms together. “It feels manipulative. Like I’m using you to get what I want. I don’t want you to feel like I conned you into this.”
There was an emotional emphasis on the words “conned you into this.” I frowned. “You wouldn’t be. Besides, it’s not like Codex is here. You’re not sub-contracting with a firm of detectives. I’m just a civilian who desperately wants Bernard to be punished for his crimes.”
In the Clear (Codex Book 3) Page 13
