I stand and Pri is now beside me, just at the edge of the coffee table. Her chin lifts defiantly and her eyes meet mine. “I’m not dropping the case.”
“You have to consider—”
“No,” she says. “You know that means he goes free.”
That’s the idea, I think, but I’m not going to admit that to her or anyone else. “We’ll talk.”
“We just did.” She eyes the coffee and says, “Please tell me one of those is for me.”
“White mocha or cinnamon dolce?” Adam asks, indicating the appropriate trays.
Pri grabs a white mocha. “Thank you,” she says, sipping the hot beverage and ignoring me. “I understand the hotel is no longer safe?”
“Speaking as an assassin, or rather an ex-assassin,” Savage amends, “I don’t do that shit anymore, I’m a new man now, but when I was that guy, I loved hotel hits. The staff rotates, chatters for the right price, and makes it easy to blend in and sneak right on inside your target’s private space.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re a guy who blends in,” Pri comments.
“Better than you might think,” Savage replies, eyeing me.
“What he’s saying,” Blake interjects, “is that hotels can work, but not with this level of a contract hit in play. One night is fine. Two is not.”
She sips her coffee. “Then where to now?”
Blake’s eyes meet mine and my prior plan goes out the door. I give him a lift of the chin and he needs no more. And I swear that bastard’s lips quirk with amusement. Fuck him. I don’t care what he thinks right now. I care about Pri. And I’m going to make her listen to reason if I have to tie her to my damn bed. It’s where I’ve wanted her anyway.
Chapter Twenty-One
ADRIAN
At this point, we’re huddled in the center of the hotel living room drinking coffee while an assassin could be plotting a way to get to us. “We have to assume we’ve been followed. What’s the plan to get us all the hell out of here?”
Blake sips his coffee and gives a bag by the chair a nudge with his foot. “Adam brought his bag of disguises. He’s going to dress you two up all pretty.”
“Easier to do with Pri,” Adam says, giving me side-eye. “You are another story. We’ll forget pretty and just stick to making you a different shade of ugly.”
“You only wish you were my kind of pretty,” I say, patting my cheek. “That’s why you’re always playing dress-up.”
He laughs and motions for Pri to sit in a chair and for once, she obeys, probably because it’s not me dishing out the orders.
Savage steps closer and gives me and then Pri a quick inspection before he grins. “Just so you know, it didn’t go unnoticed. You two look so darn cute in your matching black outfits,” Savage chimes in. “Twins like Adam and Eve, only they were naked.”
“Jesus, Savage,” Adam murmurs, kneeling in front of Pri.
“I’m not sure He was there,” Savage replies. “Not in the Garden.”
“Adam and Eve were not twins,” Pri points out. “That’s weird, Savage.”
“Ignore Savage,” Adam instructs Pri, unzipping his bag. “That’s what the rest of us do.”
Blake walks out on the patio and does whatever it is Blake does. I stand behind Pri, watching Adam work, listening to him interact with Pri. We’ve all asked her to trust us to keep her alive. I’ve asked her to trust me to such a degree that I want her to walk away from Waters. And I am not sure I’ve given her enough of me to deserve that trust. The problem is that once I do, I may end up losing what she’s given me. And her.
I almost laugh at the idea that I tried to walk away from her last night. Like that is ever fucking happening.
It’s not.
Ever.
Happening.
***
A few minutes later, Pri is in a red wig with a shoulder-length bob style, a pink coat, and pink lipstick.
“You’re done,” Adam says, standing to allow her to do the same. “Go take a look in the mirror and get comfortable with the new you.”
She stands up and turns toward the bedroom, only to run right into me. I catch her arms, and her lips part in surprise, the heat of anger and attraction ripe between us. And damn it, she’s just as pretty as a redhead. She’s just so fucking perfect, too damn perfect for the likes of me and she doesn’t seem to care.
“I didn’t know you were there,” she murmurs softly.
“And yet, I am,” I say, and it’s a complicated statement that reaches well beyond this moment in time. She knows it, too. I see it in the slight flicker of awareness in her eyes. But this is not a new revelation between us. We have always been complicated. We have always been forbidden. And when you cross those kinds of lines, the forbidden kind, there are consequences. And we are now living those consequences in the way of Waters’ attention on Pri, which I must find a way to shift.