Then Kozlov had happened. And dinner had happened. And the plan for her to check into the suite had happened. And now she found herself in the midst of a very important mission, which meant knocking boots or taking the time to sit down and have a good ol’ fashioned heart-to-heart were both pretty much out of the question.
“Huh,” she said, watching him pull a bug detector from his backpack. He set the instrument to vibrate instead of beep. Can’t have our neighbor overhearing our little search, now can we? “We used that same model in…” She caught herself before she said the Secret Service. “…my job,” she finished lamely.
And lame responses seem to be my stock in trade today, don’t you know? Geez!
“That’s because it’s the best model out there,” he said. His matter-of-fact tone seemed to echo across the gulf that had formed between them.
Checking a hotel room for listening devices was the first thing anyone working in the wide world of espionage did, be they Secret Service agents, tattooed motorcycle mechanics/clandestine operators, or others. Sort of like the first thing people in their line of work did upon clandestinely appropriating a vehicle was to disable the interior light that comes on when the door opens.
Tricks of the trade. Learned through trial and life-ending error. She shuddered.
Dan ran the bug detector all around the room, taking special care with the wall that connected their suite to Kozlov’s. He paused here and there, flattening his hand against the plaster. And near the corner, he leaned in to put his ear to the wall.
Penni almost quipped, When Chelsea and Zoelner talked about getting ears inside Kozlov’s room, I think they meant something a little more high-tech. Har-har. The joke fell so flat inside her own head that she didn’t dare send it out into the world for fear of the resounding splat it would make.
Then Dan bent to press his hand to the floorboard and the move caused his sweater to pull up while his Levis pulled down. The gap created was enough to give her a peek at the tan muscles in his lower back. Enough for her to see the waistband on his black boxer briefs. Enough to have her remembering another hotel room in another foreign city and the way he’d held her, kissed her, touched her…
Her blood grew warm at the recollection of his lips, his big hands, his hard body against hers. Moving. Brushing. Rubbing. Liquid heat bloomed low in her belly and between her thighs. She crossed her legs and squeezed, chastising herself. Really, Penni. You just convinced yourself that now is not the time.
Right. She had done that, hadn’t she?
“Looks like we’re in luck. No electronic creepy crawlies to worry about,” he said, pushing to a stand. Whew! Not seeing his broad back and underpants helped to return her focus. Sort of. Okay, not really. “He won’t be able to say the same for too much longer.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and crossed back to the bed.
The way he walked, all sinewy coordination and fluid movement, reminded her of a wild animal. Something big and sleek and powerful. The ache to touch him, to hold him, to harness all that power for herself was incredibly strong, tempered only by the silence in the room as he selected a few things from the stuff on the bed, reloaded his backpack with the rest, and sauntered back to the adjoining wall.
For a few seconds she watched him run his hand along the plaster again, the quiet growing, growing, growing until it was almost deafening. Almost…crushing. Like a hundred pounds of pressure pushing against her eardrums.
She couldn’t stand it!
“I’ve noticed there’s some…er…tension between Chelsea and Zoelner,” she finally finished. Okay, and all things considered, that wasn’t a bad start. Neutral ground on which to begin a tentative conversation that would hopefully help close the distance between them.
“Ha!” His bark of laughter echoed around the room as he taped something to the wall that looked like the round electrodes used in hospitals to hook up a patient to the machines that charted their vitals. He stuck some wires into the electrode and then twisted the opposite end of the wires around themselves before threading them into a metal tip. He then inserted that metal tip into a handheld digital recorder.
Setting the recorder on top of the dresser, he moved to the other end of the wall and said, “Tension. I guess that’s one way of putting it.” He repeated the procedure with the electrode and the wires and the recorder. This time he set the device on the seat of the plush crimson chair pushed into the corner. “But I’d say it’s more a case of mutual lust or mutual loathing. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
Indeed. Although that’d never been their problem. Pretty much from the start it’d been mutual lust and mutual liking. Then again, that was before she’d made such a fool of herself at dinner. Before the Grand Canyon had sprung up between them. She ventured, “And do you know why there’s so much tension?”
He shrugged, and she totally did not notice the way the hem of his sweater rode up to reveal his belt buckle. All right already. So maybe she did notice that it was the same belt buckle she’d fumbled to unhook three months ago when—