“Speaking of appetites…” The waiter approached and she trailed off. When the man left, Alex folded her hands on the table. “What was that back at my place?”
“Which that are you referring to?” Simon used the edge of his shirt to polish his glasses. “I’m remembering several events in need of a searchlight and a depth charge.”
He would not make a joke of this. She had a job to do and she was going to do it. The waiter approached again with their beverages. Alex fumed until he left.
“Fun time is over, Simon.” She leaned forward to issue her threat in a harsh whisper. “Answer the question, or I swear I’ll cuff you to my wrist for the duration of the op.”
One brow raised, he didn’t smile. “If I’d known you’d developed such exotic tastes I would’ve insisted on bringing my paddle collection. You could use a good spanking.”
She shifted in her seat as she flashed on an erotic interlude involving all sorts of objects she’d never considered in conjunction with this man. Maybe she’d missed something in the time they’d been dating?
His lips quirked. “My. Someone has a kinky side.”
“Answer. The. Question.” She issued the command through clenched teeth.
“No.” Eyes dipping to her breasts, lids lowered, he taunted her in a whisper. “I don’t have a paddle collection.”
He thought he knew exactly how close to the edge he could push her before she broke. Well, newsflash, she’d reached her breaking point.
“Simon…” She growled his name.
He leisurely stirred cream and a mound of sugar into his tea before taking long minutes to study some text messages on his phone.
“If I have to ask you again…”
“You know…” Lifting his cup to his lips, Simon took a measured sip then closed his eyes as if savoring the blend. “It’d be awfully difficult for you to keep me under lock and key and have me finish researching how to break into the MoMA in a week.”
Tendrils of icy dread wrapped around Alex’s throat and squeezed. “A week?”
“It’s definitely about the painting, but we’re not stealing it. They’re giving us a hollow frame to replace the original.”
Their waiter chose that moment to bustle forward with their breakfast. Alex used the time he spent refilling her coffee and getting them real maple syrup to comprehend why Downing might be replacing the painting’s frame with a hollow one. When they were alone again, Alex forked up some eggs and tried to tease out how much Simon knew. “Do you think he wants to smuggle something in the frame?”
From experience, she knew though Simon focused on pouring golden-brown syrup over his stack of pancakes, he really considered her question. He’d easily used half the bottle before he set down the syrup. Alex tried not to picture him drizzling the amber liquid along her navel when he took his first bite and licked lingering droplets from his lips.
“You’re going to get diabetes,” she said.
He ignored the criticism and chewed, a thoughtful expression drawing his brows close. “They seem more interested in the frame than the painting.”
Alex laid down her fork to give him her full attention. The eggs were rubbery anyway and she’d added too much salt.
Another bite of pancake and a sip of tea later, Simon shook his head. “What I don’t get is how they knew I was with you. They couldn’t have followed us from FBI HQ. Could they?”
Probably they had a tracer on his phone, but she didn’t need to tell Simon that. He’d figure it out himself if he thought about it long enough. She was surprised he hadn’t already.
“I’m not as worried about that as I am about what you told them.” Her mind still fixated on that kiss, she stabbed a bite of his pancake, wanting to know what the inside of his mouth would taste like right now.
Simon’s lips twitched as his gaze followed the fork to her mouth. “I told them the truth.”
Alex chewed and swallowed the drippingly sweet mouthful before reaching for her water. “Which truth is that?”
“I told him I’m seducing you to get information about your undercover op so I can burn you the way you burned me.”
Seduce hit her animal hind brain at the same time her logical mind heard the words undercover op and burned. All of them tangled together, forming a trip wire that shorted her ability to speak. He’d blown her cover? He planned to seduce her? She gaped at him.
“Oh please, Alex.” He rolled his eyes. “It was a joke. I didn’t tell them anything except that I wanted to get laid.”
Alex’s hand jerked reflexively to the right, knocking over her coffee cup. Brown liquid ran in a river across the table toward Simon. He grabbed a stack of napkins from the dispenser and pushed them against the threatening deluge, holding it at bay before it hit the floor or his glasses. By the time he had everything cleaned up she’d almost managed to formulate a coherent response.
“So that’s why you kissed me?” A pile of brown, wet napkins at the end of the table held her attention as she asked the question and tried to ignore the bereft, needy feeling in her middle.
Withdrawing his wallet from his rear pocket, Simon flipped a few bills on top of the slightly coffee-stained check, covering his half. “That’s why I kissed you.”
Embarrassment and disappointment made her stare at the traffic streaming down the avenue.
“Sorry, sweetheart. I tried to make it good for you.” His tone went low and suggestive. He baited her.
She snapped her head around. “Go out of my sight again? I will lock you up. This time, for good.”
Simon’s hand convulsed against the table and a little tic jumped to life under his right ear. In that moment Alex had no doubt he hated her. He stood and walked out the door, leaving her to pay the bill. When she emerged from the diner, he waited in a cab alongside the curb. The ride uptown might’ve been the tensest in the history of Manhattan. Staring straight ahead, jaw working as if he’d chewed metal shavings for breakfast, Simon didn’t speak once. Not when she asked where they were headed and not when he ushered her into the elevator of the luxury high-rise he lived in.
By the time they reached his front door, her nerves sang with all the aural finesse of a howling cat. Every move he made—the way his muscles bunched as he took his keys from his front pocket, how the line of his neck tensed as he bent to examine the lock—reminded her that this man who’d kissed her in a way that made her lips tingle and her knees buckle was off limits. For good. Though why she should care about a lying, thieving, double-crossing…
Simon opened his front door and Alex blinked at the fading tendrils of a red-gold sunset stretching overhead. Inside, the door closed behind her, she stared open-mouthed at the glorious sky with gilt-edged clouds floating past and ignored the books and other artifacts scattered across the wide-open loft. The entire space was one big atrium.
“This is your place?” she asked.
“Technically, it belongs to David Tallis.” Simon tossed his keys onto a pile of papers on the entry table. “He could have it back anytime he wants.”
Around the edges of the room, and in every conceivable nook, he’d jammed bookcases. Books cascaded from a haphazard pile about his bed. On the surface of a giant glass desk stacks of books all but obscured an enormous computer monitor. Alex trailed her fingers over the gilded spine of one of her favorite classics—Jane Eyre—and tried to ignore Simon’s bed in the far corner of the loft. A mechanical-appearing contraption, it hung by a metal pulley system attached to steel beams overhead, and could be raised or lowered for sleep as space needs dictated.
“This place must be great for entertaining.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Simon disappeared into the bathroom and reemerged with his toiletry kit. Holding it, he frowned at the small leather bag in a way that made her want to smooth the lines from his brow.
“What?” she asked as he disappeared into the bathroom once more.
“I need to use the equipment in my and Günter’s business space downstairs,” h
e said. “We need to stay in the building.”
The intimacy of being in his place compelled her to scramble for emotional cover. “We— I mean, wouldn’t that be obvious to Max? That you’re keeping me a little too close to your home base?”
Toothbrush in his hand, Simon stuck his head out of the bath. “I’ll just tell him I’m playing double agent if he figures out who you are.”
“And have you?” Alex raised one brow. “Been playing double agent?”
Simon ducked inside to rinse his mouth, then returned to approach her. Recognizing the predatory glint in his eyes, Alex resisted the urge to retreat several steps. He crooked his fingers through her belt loops and jerked her toward him and she gasped.
“I’m not half the liar you seem to think.” He dipped his head to whisper in her ear. “I told him exactly what I intend to do with you.”
“Simon.” Alex halfheartedly pushed at his shoulders. “Don’t toy with me. It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?” The hot wash of his breath rumbled along the shell of her ear and she shivered. “That I’m manipulating you? Or that you like it?”
Arousal and panic dueled in Alex’s midsection, adrenaline doing nothing to slow the spread of warmth to her core. Pulses of white heat teased at her clit, making her acutely aware of Simon’s ability to play her like a finely tuned instrument. At the thought of the word play, suspicion kicked the supports out from under her equilibrium.
She cast a searching eye over the loft. “Do you do your work for Gibbons here or in the space you share with Günter? If I get a warrant what will we find?”
A door slammed on his expression, cutting off the spark in his eyes and he turned away. “Thank you.”
Though she’d meant to break the intimate contact, she found herself regretting her ham-handed tactics. “For what?”
“For proving me right.”
Alex gave a quizzical shake of her head. He was making no sense.
“I’ve always wondered if you were just more interested in fucking me over than in fucking me.” As she gasped and stuttered, he continued in a bored tone. “You really should try not to make it so easy for me to hate you, Alexandra.”
Hate?
Like a lumbering beast crawling from some dank pit, the concept of Simon’s antipathy pushed into her awareness. He really hated her. Hand fluttering to her throat, she searched for oxygen and her voice, stared at his back as he bent to plug in the laptop. She had five seconds to pull herself together, swallow the lump in her throat and pretend indifference she didn’t feel before he faced her and sat. By the time he glanced her way, only a faint heat in her cheeks could give away the shock and hurt buffeting her heart’s rocky shores. She cleared her throat. Looked about for a place to hide in the wide-open space. Her searching gaze alighted on the bed’s rumpled covers.
“I need to do some research. Figure out where the MoMA security office is located,” he said, sliding his glasses on his nose. “You can have the bed if you’re tired.”
“What about my things?” Though it cost her to admit she needed something from him, she kept her chin up and soldiered on. “I need a change of clothes. Something to sleep in.”
A thread of silence stretched taut between them. When Simon finally spoke, he didn’t look up. “Your stuff is in a box. At the bottom of the armoire.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Changed directions and threatened to provoke a six-car pileup on the throughway of her emotions.
“You kept my things?” Given his animosity toward her, she’d have thought he burned anything she’d left behind long ago. And gleefully.
He didn’t answer, merely crossed one ankle over his opposite knee and adjusted his glasses. Reaching over his head, he clicked on a reading lamp and settled in for what appeared to be a long session of research and snooping.
Alex rested her attention on a simple oak armoire at the far side of the room. Going to it, she then opened the doors and knelt down. Fingers skimming shoes and forgotten clothing items, she discovered a cardboard records box beneath. She took it out and deposited it on the floor before lifting the lid. The item on top draped lightly from her fingers when she held it up. A pink satin cami. A familiar fragrance wafted toward her nostrils and she inhaled deep. With the aroma came a deluge of memories. In her mind’s eye, Simon caressed the strap from her shoulder, encouraging the satin to drape lower. The top slipped, baring the delicate pink crest of her nipple. He’d dipped his head and sucked hard.
“God, Simon.” She’d breathed his name and he’d cupped her bottom to position her against his naked erection.
Still damp from the shower, smelling of mint and spice, he’d pumped his hips forward. The careful movement slid his cock along her seam, pushing her matching satin shorts aside and settling his shaft between her legs. The head of his cock bumped the nub of her clit repeatedly as he teased her pussy, never entering. Wet sounds, heavy breathing and the scent of musk wrapped around them. Hands still at her bottom, he’d canted her hips to better receive him. Sweat poured onto her legs, making her slip against his skin as she anchored her limbs around his waist. She’d whispered sweet nothings born of half-crazed need and determined self-denial.
“Come for me, sweetheart,” he’d said, breathing hard. “Come for me and I’ll give you my cock. Come on, baby. Please.”
A thread of sensation pulled at her abdomen and her cries quickened. Desire pooled in her sex until sensation overflowed the bounds of her existence. Her hips jerked involuntarily, bumping him hard at the door of her sex. She’d come in sharp, repeated pulses. On the first wave, he’d entered her, slamming home with a force that sent her orgasm sailing into the stratosphere. She’d cried out. He’d clutched her to him, convulsing with the power of his own release.
Breathing hard in the here and now, Alex slammed the lid on the box and grabbed a book from one of Simon’s many overflowing shelves. Cheeks flushed, she surreptitiously glanced at him as she perched on the edge of his bed. Engrossed in his computer, glasses reflecting the monitor’s glow, Simon appeared not to notice as she fluffed a pillow and settled against the headboard. The bed rocked softly from side to side, mattress swaying long after she settled in and began to read. Many hours later, wrapped in darkness, stars winking overhead, she awoke to the murmur of male voices.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Günter’s question penetrated her sleep-hazed mind first.
Alex held still.
“Do I have a choice?” Simon had his back to her. The men sat in the kitchen area, the counter lighting outlining their shadowed forms.
“If the museum catches you…”
“I already called Ryan. It’s a black bag disavow mission, but they’re willing to work with me to deactivate the security system in that section.”
He’d called Ryan without consulting her? How did he even have the agent’s number? Fuck. He’d hacked her cell.
Simon unrolled a piece of paper and shone a penlight on it. “I need a closer look at the way the frame is fastened to the painting. You wanted something I’m not an expert at? This would be it.”
Günter seemed to consider the paper, probably a blueprint of the gallery housing the Picasso.
“I’d say if you found out who their phone people are…responded to a trouble call about ninety minutes before shift change…you could hide out in one of the wiring closets until closing time. It’d allow you to bring your tools. Disable the alarm and circumvent the camera feed so Alex could get the dummy frame inside.” Günter sighed. “You really should wake her. Let her work with you to figure this out.”
“Are you on her side now?” Though Simon kept his voice to a whisper, agitation screamed from every syllable.
Alex curled her fingers into the sheet, clutching the fabric tight.
“I’m not on her side. I just don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I made.” Regret couldn’t have been more obvious if it’d been lit in neon above Günter’s head. “Look. I know I haven’t aske
d, but would you like to tell me exactly what happened? Between you and her?”
“I’m still not sure what happened myself. I came out of the shower one evening to a posse of FBI agents in my apartment. They’d thoroughly trashed the place.” Simon tilted his kitchen stool on two legs and kept a grip with one hand on the table. “My boss was with them, holding my personal laptop.”
Alex pictured Simon’s old third-floor walkup. A plethora of books and artwork scavenged from old books and magazines brightened the faded wallpaper and gloomy lighting. He’d made her tea and coffee in chipped china cups. She’d cherished the worn china simply because he found them interesting enough to collect for her at the Sunday flea markets they enjoyed. He wanted something feminine to make her feel at home when she came over, he’d said.
“Alex had gone out for a bit. To the store for some things we needed for dinner. She was gone way too long. I’d just given her the key to my place the week before…” Simon peered into the bottom of his beer bottle before draining the dregs. “I didn’t see her again until my trial.”
“Did you try to contact her?” Günter asked.
“No.” He turned his head toward where Alex lay shrouded in darkness. “What would’ve been the point?”
Alex fought a stab of pain at the remembrance. The weeks she’d waited for a letter, an explanation, or even a simple invitation to visit him. But it’d never come. Then, she’d tried to see him. It’d been hard enough walking through the doors of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, but sitting in the exposed lobby when she heard from a guard Simon never wanted to see her again? That had been humiliation and heartbreak rolled into one.
“Don’t you think maybe someone else could’ve planted those files on your laptop? Even remotely?” Gun broke into Alex’s ugly memories, washing them away.
“I suppose, but she had my laptop password and my key.”
Günter paused, beer bottle halfway to his lips. “How’d that come about? She must’ve nicked it. But you knew?”
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