Page 94 of Talk to Me

Finally, I broke eye contact and looked around. Once I was in the chair, he nudged me closer to the desk. Then he brushed his fingers against my nape and another shudder went through me that had my cunt clenching and my nipples taut.

Holy shit.

“I’ll get your coffee,” he said, the whisper a seductive promise or maybe my brain was just conjuring all of that. A moment later, he stepped away but I kept feeling his gaze when it touched me.

I couldn’t focus for the array of shocks hitting my system one right after the other. Remy kissed me and I hadn’t even spoken to him about it. I’d almost have thought he’d forgotten about it, but I kept catching him watching me.

With Remy, like now with Locke, my awareness of him seemed to take over everything.

Remy kissed me offering me salvation and freedom. More, it had been a cold kind of heat that warmed as it chilled and set my whole being on fire.

Now Locke?

Locke had absolutely blown my damn mind like he’d discovered the secret to crack me open.

Knowing him? He had.

I touched two fingers to my lips as I tried to focus on the screen in front of me.

Whatever was going on, I liked it.

I liked it too damn much.

Chapter

Thirty

MCQUADE

“How long has she been at it today?” I pitched the question in a low voice, though I doubted Patch would have noticed, much less acknowledged us. Since she assembled her new system, she’d been at the computer near nonstop.

The only way I got her to rest at all was to pull the power supply. The first night I’d done that, she’d been so pissed off she hadn’t spoken to me for two days. She’d slept. So, I considered it a win.

Since then, she’d argued she had “modified” her schedule to include sleep. I could debate that part and would. More than once, she’d been up in the middle of the night. She didn’t always leave her room, but I would hear her moving around. She also maintained that the level of research she needed to do involved a lot of search and skims that none of us could do.

“Almost ten hours,” Remington stated in an ice dipped voice. His accent grew more pronounced when he was upset. Or maybe I was just projecting. The Brit didn’t seem to get upset. Made sense. An assassin needed low blood pressure and a cool demeanor.

I wouldn’t mistake it for indifference though. Nothing about Michael Remington was even remotely indifferent for our Patch.

“Ten hours,” I repeated, then checked my watch. It was already after eight in the evening. “She was up early today.” She’d gotten up during my watch. It was four that morning, but I would have sworn she was earlier than that. She just didn’t leave her room until four.

“Sounds right,” Remington said. “Locke told me she took a break around nine. But she was back at the computer at ten.”

So she was up from four until nine working, then ten until now?

That was more like fifteen hours.

Even if she wanted to declare the break was enough, she was pushing it. The bruises had decreased from black and blue to green and yellow in most places that we could see. That didn’t detail the hits she’d taken to her ribs or the deeper cuts, burns, and abrasions.

Her feet were still a mess. Everything Locke and Remington found to help her were useful, but they couldn’t speed her healing. Particularly if she didn’t sleep.

I scratched at the beard I’d been growing in steadily for the last few weeks. Normally, I kept it shorn for missions unless having facial hair was useful. But I’d been on the go and I’d worried more about getting her out than what my appearance was.

I’d finally trimmed it a couple of days previous when I realized I was getting length on it. A beard was fine, particularly when combined with a hat and sunglasses, it helped to muddy facial recognition. I didn’t care for it being unkempt or dirty.

“Did she eat?”

“A sandwich,” Remington answered in the same neutral tone I’d attempted to use. “It’s been almost all coffee today.”