“You didn’t think I just broke in here, did you?”
I stared back at him, mouth open, still totally at a loss for words.
“Fine,” he sighed placatingly, “how long have you been working with them?”
“I’m… I’m not. I mean, I wasn’t.”
“Obviously they extracted you from Rhodes. There’s no other way you got off that island by yourself.”
“I’ve got no reason to lie,” I shrugged. “I met them ten minutes after I met you.”
His mouth curled into a wicked smirk. “Met me?”
Somehow I returned his smirk with one of my own. “You know what I mean.”
Marcus nudged the door open another inch with his foot, and checked the alley. When he was satisfied he looked back at me, then threw a quick glance over to the pair of mattresses in the middle of the boxing ring.
“So was it fun?”
The nerve! I couldn’t believe the balls on him! And yet…
“Yeah. It was.”
“I’m talking about me, not them.”
I shrugged again. “Okay. You both were.”
He laughed — a deep gruff laugh that was as baritone as it was honest. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the distinct
impression it was his first good laugh in a very long time.
“Well at least you’ve finally got pants on,” he said, looking me over from top to bottom. “I guess that’s a first for us.”
Our gazes met, and for a long moment neither of us said anything. Something unspoken passed between us though. Something akin to an understanding.
“Andrea… are you okay?”
The gesture was sweet. Genuine. I nodded back at him and smiled. “You said my name.”
“Well considering what we’ve been through…” he said with a wink. “I figured I should probably know it, yeah.”
Voices floated down the corridor, in our direction. Holden and Randall were finally coming.
“Oh, and what happened between us?” said Marcus, abruptly. “In that bedchamber?”
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper. As his lips brushed my ear, a shockwave of exhilaration rippled through my body.
“We’re definitely doing that again.”
Twenty-Three
ANDREA
We dropped Holden off in front of a low, grey building, just as the sun cracked the sky. The four of us needed to get somewhere new, someplace safe. Somewhere we could regroup, and figured out what happened next.
All of that depended on Holden’s contacts.
“We’ll contact you when we get to where we’re going,” said Marcus, slipping Holden what amounted to an antique phone. It was pre-flip-phone. One of the oldest cellular phones I’d ever seen. “Otherwise—”