“How so?”
“I switched IDs with him.”
She was both horrified and amused by what he’d done. If they found the ID, they’d know they were here. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Yes. But it gets the Enforcers off our backs for a bit and hopefully our frenemy assassin won’t have a brain either. They’ll be chasing the mugger every time he tries to use it which will hopefully be a lot—and if he’s good at eluding them, he could buy us a lot of time. And best of all, I picked his pocket and got a pretty good wad of cash from him. The idiot didn’t even know what I did. What kind of thief can’t feel his own wallet being lifted, I ask you? You know, it’s time to just surrender the occupation when you suck that much.” Laughing, he pulled a hot sandwich out of the bag and held it out toward her.
She could kiss him for his kindness. The delicious smell made her stomach cramp so hard that for a moment she thought she’d be sick. Forcing it down, she took the sandwich from him with a calmness she didn’t feel and unwrapped it even though part of her wanted to start eating it, wrap and all.
“If I start biting on my fingers, don’t stop me.”
He gave her a knowing grin as he ate his own.
She bit into the sandwich and savored the sweet meat taste. Oh yeah, this was good and she was unbelievably grateful to him for bringing it back. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He swallowed his bite before he spoke again. “By the way, just so you know, I’d normally be charging a fee for this service.”
“What service?”
“Feeding you.”
She didn’t know why, but that offended her. “Excuse me?”
His dark eyes glowed with wicked warmth as he raked his gaze slowly over her body as if savoring every inch. For some reason she couldn’t name, it made her stomach flutter. “Oh yeah, baby. A meal for a beautiful woman… at least a kiss for it. It’s mandatory. But since I know how hungry you are, I’m letting it slide. Next time… it will cost you.”
Her anger vanished under the weight of his gentle teasing.
“I don’t know. If I were you, I’d hold out for something better.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Mmm… yeah, hell to freeze over.”
He laughed good-naturedly before he returned to eating his sandwich. “There’s more food in the bag and drinks. Just so you know. I got plenty to feed even my sister Kasen, and believe me, she eats like an overweight torna.”
Now that was impressive. It was said a torna ate three times its two-hundred-pound body weight a day.
Desideria fell silent as she tried to eat in spite of her cramping stomach. She was starving, but at this point her body was so used to being hungry that it wanted to reject her offering. Never had she been more miserable.
It was several minutes before her body calmed down enough that she could focus on anything else. She glanced over at Caillen. He sat in the corner, on the cold ground without so much as a thought about it. The laces on his left boot were untied. He was such a beguiling combination of rogue and gentleman.
His sister had definitely raised him right.
And that thought led her to the memory of the woman in the vidframe she couldn’t identify. She didn’t even know why, but there was a bitter pain in her every time she thought about why he kept that woman’s photo with the rest of his family and friends.
Before her brain could interfere with her mouth, she found the last question she wanted to ask falling out and breaking the silence. “Who’s the woman in the last still when you turn on your frame?”
He froze midchew before he leveled a murderous glare at her. That menacing look actually sent a shiver over her body and aw the killer that resided inside him. For one nanosecond, she half expected him to leap at her throat. “You went through my stuff?”
“It was a long two days.”
That only seemed to anger him more. “You went through my stuff?”
She sighed irritably. “Are you going to keep repeating that question?”
His glare intensified and the venom in his voice was chilling. “I hate for anyone to search my things without my permission. It gets so far under my skin that it might as well be a DNA marker.”
“Sorry,” she said honestly. “I didn’t realize it was such an issue for you.”