Fifteen
Aria was arranginga platter of olives and feta when she felt arms slide around her waist. She turned her head and Damian nuzzled herneck.
“I came to see if you needed help,” hesaid.
She laughed. “Are you sure that’s why youcame?”
He grinned. “One of thereasons.”
She touched her lips to his, letting his tongue slide into her mouth as his hands slid down her stomach, gathering the skirt of her dress in one hand and sliding the other between herthighs.
Her head fell back against his shoulder as they moved upward, his lips setting fire to her neck. It took effort to playfully swat his hands away. She was already wet forhim.
Ready forhim.
She turned around and reached for the platter. “There are four hungry people on the terrace waiting for this food.” Her face felt flushed, her body fevered, just from a few seconds of his touch. “If you want to help you can take itout.”
He grinned. “If you insist. Personally, I think they could wait a few minutes. Orhours.”
“So can you,” she said, swatting his ass as he turnedaround.
When he disappeared onto the terrace, she turned around and poured water from the faucet into a glass, hoping to cool herself down. She would have liked to blame her raging libido on her pregnancy, but it would have been a cop-out.
She’d desperately wanted Damian since the moment she’d laid eyes on him. It hadn’t lessened an iota. She was beginning to resign herself to living in a constant state of arousal. Her only consolation was knowing he was suffering alongsideher.
“Can I help?” She turned to find Nora entering the kitchen from the terrace. “I think Damian meant to come back in but you know how they are — they get distracted when they’re around eachother.”
She laughed. It was true; if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Damian and Cole had known Locke and Derek for ages. They’d become fast friends during the week they’d been in Greece, and Aria had delighted in watching Damian relax a little when they returned from Athens eachday.
Of course, tonight there was cause for celebration: they’d finally gotten what appeared to be a solid tip on Stefano Anastos’whereabouts.
“Absolutely.” Aria pointed to the eggplant she’d just taken out of the oven. “Want to arrange that on one of theplatters?”
“You gotit.”
Nora went to work and Aria continued stuffing the grape leaves she’d been working on when Damian had sidetracked her with his hands andmouth.
Nora had only been there since that morning, but Aria had quickly grown used to her company. She was smart and straightforward, and while she didn’t have the same peaceful quality Aria had noted in Angel, Jenna, and Charlotte, Aria found her directnessrefreshing.
Nora wasn’t part of the Syndicate, but from what Damian had said about Locke’s operation, it wasn’t very different; Locke’s targets were just morepersonal.
That even Nora Murphy — an ex-FBI agent — could find a place for herself there was comforting. It made Aria think there would be room for her in the Syndicate even if she chose to engage more actively in the business than the Syndicatewives.
And she would be engaged to some degree. Damian had been open with her about the business, looping her in on decisions about adding resources on the street and the various methods for protecting their assets from detection by law enforcement. She’d been surprised to find that she enjoyed the strategy of it all. In fact, she’d spent much of the evening thinking about the tip on Stefano Anastos’ whereabouts, contemplating the ways they might be able to breach what was surely significant protection aroundhim.
“Do you think this tip is a sure thing?” Aria askedNora.
“As sure as anything can be in this situation,” Norasaid.
“But they won’t really know until they get in,right?”
“It’s always that way,” Nora said. “But we did pull video from a local street cam that showed Anastos going into the club a few days ago. None of the footage we found afterword showed him leaving, so it’s a safe assumption that he’s still holed upthere.”
“I guess it makes sense,” Aria said, wrapping the last grape leaf around a mixture of goat cheese, spinach, andherbs.
“How so?” Nora asked, looking at Aria while she rinsed herhands.
“If Stefano wanted to hunker down, he’d probably want a place where he had access to food, liquor and women,” Aria said. “Where better to get all of those things than a stripclub?”