Marcus reacts immediately. He draws in a breath, his eyes sparking as his hand slides around to palm the back of my head. Dragging me toward him, he presses a hard kiss to my lips.
“Say that again, angel,” he mutters, his mouth barely leaving mine as he speaks.
“I love you.” A smile curves my lips, but I keep kissing him through it. “I love you. I love you. I fucking love you.”
“Goddammit.” His other hand snakes around my waist, plastering me against his wet body as he plunges his tongue into my mouth. When we finally break apart for air, he growls softly. “I just had you, angel, and now I want to fuck you all over again. I want to hear you scream those words while I’m inside you.”
“I think I can manage that,” I shoot back, a grin tugging at my lips again.
“You fuckin’ better. I’m already hard as hell just thinking about it.”
He’s not lying. I can feel the evidence of his arousal digging into my lower belly. I half expect Marcus to hoist me up onto the edge of the sink and make me fulfill my promise right now, but after another long, deep kiss, he draws back with a pained groan.
“As much as I hate to stop this, we should get downstairs. Theo and Ryland are going over what we’ve got on the Viper so far, and we should be there for it.” Then he gives me a half smile, one corner of his lips quirking up. “Say it one more time.”
“I love you,” I whisper.
The half-smile blooms into one that takes over his entire face. “I love you so fucking much, angel.”
With one more hard kiss, he steps back, swatting me on the ass as I turn to head for the door. He wraps a towel around his waist and scoops up his clothes before following me into the attached bedroom where I’ve been staying—when I’m not sleeping in one of the men’s rooms, which hasn’t been all that often lately.
“Meet you downstairs in a few minutes?” I ask, heading toward the closet.
“Yeah.”
He crosses to the bedroom door, shooting one last glance over his shoulder as he leaves. He seems about as reluctant to leave the little bubble of happiness we created in the shower as I am, but we both know reality can’t be kept at bay for long.
One day, I promised myself. One day there won’t be all this bullshit to deal with, and we’ll be able to spend the whole day naked if we want. There’ll be time to talk about stupid, trivial stuff and to laugh at jokes and to just be.
I only sort of believe my own vow.
If that day is coming, it’s so far off that I can’t see it through the thunderclouds that are rolling toward us on the horizon.
A storm is coming.
And we’ll be damn lucky if we all make it out alive.
By the time I get dressed and head downstairs, Marcus is already down there.
I find him seated on a stool at the kitchen island across from Theo and Ryland, the latter of whom also looks freshly showered. Our training session was a lot harder for me than it was for Ryland, but even his heavily tattooed skin was gleaming with a sheen of sweat by the time we finished. It gives me a tiny ego boost to know that I at least made him work for the ass-kicking he gave me.
“Anything new?” I ask, settling onto the stool next to Marcus.
“Not as much as we’d like.” Theo’s blue-green eyes warm as he glances up at me.
I know my cheeks are still flushed from the long shower and the toe-curling sex with Marcus, and I have a feeling Theo and Ryland know exactly why my shower took so long. But I don’t see jealousy on either his face or Ryland’s when the dark-haired man looks up from the laptop in front of him.
I never expected to fall in love with three men, and I don’t think any of them expected to fall for the same woman. But we’ve found our way through this thing that’s developing between all of us, and with every passing day, it feels more solid and real.
“Theo’s right,” Ryland tells me with a grimace. “It’s been harder than we hoped tracking the Viper’s activity, period. We still haven’t gotten anywhere close to tying him to Luca D’Addario.”
“It doesn’t help that we’re trying to do all of this without Luca realizing we’re on to him.” Marcus shakes his head. “If we didn’t have to worry about being subt
le, we could probably get some useful information out of people by brute force. But there’s no chance Luca wouldn’t get wind of it if we interrogated one of his contacts. He found out about us killing that piece of shit Jordan within days of when it happened. He’s got people all over the city.”
“Can we afford to go slow?” I ask, my stomach clenching. “If he’s got that many people in his pocket, how long will it be before he realizes we’re digging into things we shouldn’t be, even if we are subtle about it?”
“I don’t know.” Ryland scrubs a hand through his dark brown hair, the muscles of his forearm flexing with the movement. “If we had an exact timeline, it would be a hell of a lot easier. But as of right now, our best bet is to just keep digging as quietly as we can, and pray we unearth something incriminating before Luca finds out what we’re doing.”