18

The Interrogation

The interrogation room Grant leads me to is much worse than I expect.

To reach our destination, he leads me down several flights of stairs, each one drawing closer to the ship’s fuel-scented bowels. I don’t remember a lot about the Shady Lady’s bottom deck from my tour with Tara, but I can recall an alarming lack of fresh air.

Don’t let it be the engine room. Please don’t let it be the engine room.

“This is taking things too far, isn’t it?” I ask as we bypass the last of the curious crew members, all of whom clear out with an alacrity that says much about the amount of authority he’s been granted on this ship.

“Be quiet,” Grant says, his voice filled with mock solemnity. “You’ll go wherever I tell you to go—and you’ll like it.”

Well, the first part of that statement might be true, but no amount of Grant-imposed sternness can enforce the second one. I’ll like whatever I want to like, thank you very much, and the dark hold where fuel is pumped and burned to keep thirty thousand tons of metal moving through the ocean isn’t on that list.

Yet that’s exactly where we end up, the pair of us standing at the dark portal to a loudly churning, steel-lined cell that would do a maximum-level federal prison proud.

I balk at the doorway. “It’s awfully close in there,” I say, thinking of my earlier freak-out in the gilded dining room. If a room that size with plenty of exits can cause a reaction, what is this place going to do?

Grant is alarmingly lacking in sympathy as he places a hand on the small of my back and propels me in. I think for a moment that he’s going to banish me in here—alone—but he sweeps in behind me, locking the door as he does.

The click of that lock causes a constriction in my throat, so I distract myself by turning to my husband.

“Did you catch whoever caused the blackout?” I ask. I also don’t wait for an answer before punching him on the arm and adding, “And what the hell compelled you to chase after him in the first place? I swear to God, if you’ve reinjured—”

“Not another word,” he growls, and in such a sinister way, I wonder if I misread the depth of his anger. He doesn’t really believe I caused that distraction on purpose, does he?

“But—”

“Especially not that word.” Without waiting for me to argue, he starts moving around the engine room, running his hand along seams in the walls and bolts where various pieces of machinery are attached. His actions are efficient and assured, his search thorough. I realize after about thirty seconds that he’s looking for bugs.

Safety. It’s always safety first with this man. At least, it is where I’m involved.

Since the room is large enough that his search could take hours, I start at the opposite side of the room and make my own sweep. The clanking of the machinery seems loud enough to render all electronic devices null and void, but we don’t want to risk anyone overhearing us. Especially since I’ve got quite a bit to say.

There are spots of grease on my fingers by the time I’m done, and the heat of the room has my hair curling in damp tendrils at my neck, but I come up empty.

Grant must not find anything, either, because he stops in the center of the room and turns to me. He has a wary look on his face, his brow lowered in concern. “I think we’re clear.”

“Does that mean I’m allowed to speak now?” I ask.

“Yes, but—”

I don’t wait to hear his stipulations. “You stupid, hard-headed, careless idiot,” I say as I march toward him. His lips twitch with laughter, but I don’t let it distract me. “And don’t you dare laugh at me right now, because I’ve never been so angry in my whole life. Take off your shirt.”

“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” he says as he reaches for his shirt hem. He also winces at the contortion of his body, which has me slapping his hands away so I can perform the action for him instead.

“I can’t believe you’re this irresponsible,” I mutter as I slide my hands under the warm cotton to the even warmer skin below. “You know you’re not supposed to be putting this much strain on your injury. How long did you chase after the guy?”

“Not long enough. I didn’t catch him.”

I peer up at him, but his expression is guarded.

“I’m okay, Penelope. A little sore, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

The liar. The angry pink scar on his abdomen looks much as it always does—like an exploded starfish—but when I touch it, he winces and automatically turns sideways to favor the wound. The whole reason I developed the poke test in the first place is because his physical therapist once told me that the best way to determine if he’s lying about his state of wellness is to jab a finger right in there.

His body will stop you, he said. It’s a lot smarter than he is.

I love his physical therapist, by the way. His specialty is working with FBI agents who refuse to accept the limitations of their own bodies.

“Goddammit, Grant. It’ll serve you right if you rip everything open inside and end up on the operating table again,” I say. My words are stern, but the kiss I drop on his poor, tortured skin is anything but.

The action drags a groan out of him. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t do that again.”

“Or what?” I ask and do it again. Despite his convalescence, his abdomen is still chiseled underneath that scar. As is the case with mountains and rocky monuments, eroding a form like his requires more than a few months. “You’ll lock me in an interrogation room? Torture me until I confess to trying to steal the Luxor?”

“Of course not.” He pauses long enough to sigh. “I know this room is a lot smaller than you prefer, but I couldn’t think of any other way to be alone with you. Not without tipping anyone off.”

“Yes, well. Maybe if you weren’t cutting such a conspicuous figure on board this ship, it wouldn’t matter.” I drop his shirt and jerk my head toward a metal chair off to one side. “Grab that, would you?”

He casts a wary glance at it. “I’m okay, Penelope. I don’t need to sit down.”

Yes, he does. He needs to rest, relax, or, better yet, sleep until next week. But, “It’s not for you,” is all I say. “And stop arguing. I don’t know how long an interrogation is supposed to take, but I, for one, would like to get out of this room sooner rather than later.”

He goes to retrieve the chair while I start rummaging in a toolbox, gingerly favoring the arm that had been mauled by the angry man upstairs. I don’t stop until I find what I’m looking for.

“Why do you want zip ties?” Grant asks when I turn to face him. No explanation is necessary, though. He picks up on my intention after only a few seconds, laughter crinkling his eyes. “You think?”

“I know.” I plop onto the chair and hold the restraints aloft. “And you’d better make them good and tight. We’ll need there to be marks, or no one is going to believe I’ve been properly questioned. Kit O’Kelly strikes me as a man who likes to take his time with these sorts of things.”

When he hesitates, I add, “One of us is going to have to leave this room looking vanquished. I hate to point out the obvious, but I believe it’s my turn to take the bullet.” I cast an obvious look at the hard lines of his abdomen, now tucked away behind his form-fitting shirt. “Don’t wimp out on me now, Emerson.”

He doesn’t blink for a full thirty seconds, determined, I’m sure, to out-stare me. But I’m right, and he knows it. If we’re going to make this look convincing, there needs to be at least some torture taking place inside these walls.

“Fine,” he finally agrees, taking the zip ties from me and beginning the process of binding me to the chair. “But you know I’m more of a handcuff sort of a guy.”

It’s impossible to mistake his meaning. He’s not talking about the kind of handcuffs he uses to bring down bad guys.

“And I won’t make them very tight,” he promises as he wraps his arms around me in a move that’s much more embrace than stronghold.

Even though the engine room is sweltering and the confines of it alarming, I bask in the hot-bodied press of him. Oh, how I’ve missed this man’s touch, his voice, the low-rumbling way he laughs with his entire body.

His head dips to mine, his voice whispering over my ear. “And I won’t give you anything you can’t handle.”

A pang of liquid longing hits me deep in my gut. Those words might sound like a threat, but I know from long and excruciating experience that they’re also a promise. Grant has always had a way of knowing exactly how to push my buttons.

“I can handle anything you throw at me,” I say with a toss of my head and a flippancy that’s mostly feigned. This room might have been tolerable while I was free to prowl and explore at will, but being pinned in place causes the rattle of the engine and the closeness of the air to magnify tenfold. Only by focusing on the brush of Grant’s fingers against my skin and the glint of his strangely dark hair under the engine room lights am I able to accept my confinement with anything approaching ease.

He’ll look out for me. He won’t let me come to any harm. These are the things I know to be true.

“So do you want to ask the questions first, or should I?” I say as he eventually steps back to survey his handiwork. My arms are behind my back, secured to the chair frame at the wrist. Even though the bindings are tight, my limbs are loose. I’m about as comfortable as a person can be while bound.

Not that I expected anything less. Grant is good at this sort of thing. It’s not his first time tying me to a chair, and given the strangeness of our relationship, I doubt it will be the last.

“I warn you, I’m not going to take it easy when it’s my turn,” I add. “You may want to conserve your energy.”

He stands in front of me, feet squared and arms crossed, looking every bit as intimidating as his fake reputation suggests. At least, he looks intimidating until you get to his face. His lips are pulled up in a smile with the crinkles around his eyes to match.

“What’s your name?” he asks, dropping right into the role of interrogator.

I guess he’s going first. “Penelope Marianne Blue.”

“Occupation?”

“World’s greatest jewel thief.”

The crinkles around his eyes deepen. “Who’s your husband?”

“An obstinate brute of a man I’m rapidly coming to regret marrying.”

“That’s fair.” He pauses a beat. “Who’s Hijack?”

I jolt in my chair. It seems he’s not going to be making this easy, either.

“You already know,” I say. “He’s my ex-boyfriend back from when he and Riker and I used to run together. He wants me to help him steal the Luxor Tiara.”

Wordlessly, he scrapes a second chair along the floor until it rests opposite mine. He lowers himself into it using the kind of caution necessary when your body is in agonizing pain you refuse to admit to, sitting so close, our knees bump.

“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” he says, his expression gentle but firm. “Who is he really?”

“I don’t understand the question. I told you—he’s a car thief, a getaway driver, a wheelman. That’s all I know.”

Grant leans forward in his chair, causing his knees to press more firmly against mine. “I’ve spent the past three days sitting across the poker table from him, and every word out of his mouth is something about you. The jobs you used to pull together, how happy he is to have this opportunity to reconnect—to hear him tell the tale, you’re a paragon of every virtue known to mankind.”

My lips spread in a wide grin. Grant is jealous.

“I can’t help it if I inspire men to madness,” I say.

He rests his hands on my legs, his palms hitting me just above my knees. Despite the fact that I’m tied to a chair in order to convince a murderous smuggler that I’ve been questioned within an inch of my life, I’m comforted by those hands. Comforted and, if I’m being honest, turned on. Grant has a way of making even captivity pleasant.

“Madness is a much nicer word than I’d use,” he says with a sigh. “I mean it, Penelope. If Hijack was such a large part of your life, why haven’t you said anything about him before?”

My answer pops out automatically. “Because he wasn’t a large part of my life—not really. We hung out for a few months, pulled off a few jobs. I didn’t think he was worth mentioning.”

When Grant’s expression doesn’t lighten, I say, “Besides, it’s not like you’ve told me about every ex-girlfriend you’ve ever had. Not,” I’m careful to add, “that I want to hear any stories. Keep the subservient brunettes of your youth where they belong.”

He laughs obligingly, but it’s a short reprieve. “Has it occurred to you that Hijack is far more interested in getting his hands on this tiara than anyone else on this ship?”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t know about the guy tunneling up to my room from below,” I joke, but his meaning penetrates a few seconds later. “Wait a sec—what do you mean he wants it the most? You think Hijack is Johnny Francis?”

His only answer is a carefully lifted brow.

“Impossible,” I say. “Most of the time, Hijack is more interested in admiring his own reflection than anything else. He’s lazy. He never follows through. He’s—”

“—the exact type of guy who might sell his secrets to the highest bidder rather than earn money the hard way?”

“Well, yes,” I’m forced to admit, but only because Hijack is the sort who will take any shortcut that’s offered him. That doesn’t make him a criminal mastermind—in fact, it makes him the exact opposite. “It can’t be him. I mean, he’s a lot stronger and more persistent than the guy I used to know, but he lacks finesse. Even Riker agrees with me—he called him a hack.”

Grant’s brow comes down. “I’ve always thought Riker a man of good sense.”

Now I know things are getting twisted. “You have not. You’re just trying to distract me from all this other crap you’ve been doing.”

“What I’ve been doing?”

“Yes, Kit O’Kelly, international securities expert,” I say with heavy emphasis. “Remember that time you convinced me to come along on a dangerous undercover mission by swearing a solemn oath that you’d keep a low profile?”

Instead of answering me, his hands slide further up my legs. I jerk against the soft friction of his palms on my bare thighs, but there aren’t a whole lot of places I can go.

“Don’t you dare try to distract me right now,” I warn. “I have a lot of questions for you. Especially regarding your use of Lola as bait to draw out Johnny Francis.”

His hands halt their upward journey. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Isn’t it?” I don’t fail to note that he neither confirms nor denies my accusation. “What other explanation can you have for standing by while that poor girl is put in so much danger?”

He glances away. “I already told you that wasn’t my idea.”

“That’s not an answer. What’s going on, Grant? Why won’t you tell any of us what you’re doing?”

“I have my reasons,” he says.

Oh, man. It’s a good thing I’m tied down right now, because that might be the most arrogant comment to ever leave his mouth—and that’s saying something. “Not good enough. Try again.”

“There have been…complicated developments,” he says. “What I need most is for you to keep playing poker and keep watching Lola. I’ve got everything else handled.”

“Oh, really? Does handling things include injuring yourself to the point where you can’t even walk in a room without limping? Does handling things mean flaunting public relationships with people like Eden St. James? She suspects you of being Johnny Francis. Did you know that?”

“Does she?” A wry grimace crosses his face. “That’s going to come as a disappointment.”

“It’s going to come as an attack in the dead of night,” I counter. “Talk to me, Grant. Tell me what’s going on. You’re the one who begged me to come on this trip with you, remember? Backup? Support? The pair of us working as a team? How can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”

His hands tighten reflexively. The response is one he can’t control—I can tell because his fingers dig deep into my bare legs.

“Talk to me,” I repeat, softer this time.

Something about the earnest entreaty in my voice finally penetrates, because he draws a deep breath and shakes his head. “I know you’re not happy with the way things are set up, but the situation on board this ship isn’t what we hoped it would be.”

“Oh, really?”

“Johnny is proving more difficult to pin down than I thought.”

“No kidding?”

A reluctant chuckle shakes out of him, but he quickly sobers. “And Peter Sanchez is more dangerous than we realized, too. I don’t like it, Penelope. When it comes to how far he’s willing to go, this stuff with Lola is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Titanic again. I’m starting to get tired of that ship. This one, too.

“So tell me what you want me to do,” I say, leaning forward—or as much as I can lean, anyway. “Your Hijack theory is questionable, but I can play along with it for now. What else? Do you want me to throw Eden off your scent? Try to convince my father to lend his aid? Steal the tiara?”

There’s no mistaking the way my voice grows hitched with anticipation at that last one.

“No, no, and most definitely no,” he says, his hands moving upward on my thighs. “I already told you what I need. I wasn’t kidding about that. The best thing you can do for me right now is play poker and keep a close watch over Lola. Not,” he adds when my legs flex convulsively, “because I’m using her as bait, but because I have reason to believe Peter is.”

“You think he’d go that far?”

Grant grimaces. “I think we have to consider the possibility that we aren’t the only people on this boat with a hidden agenda.”

I can’t help but agree. It’s starting to feel like everyone we’ve met wants something more than just a twenty-million-dollar piece of jewelry. What a bunch of greedy bastards.

“Okay,” I say. “If that’s what you need, then that’s what I’ll do.”

He hesitates. “But?”

“But nothing. You asked, and I shall provide. That’s the whole point of this, right?”

He stares at me for a long, drawn-out moment. “That’s it?”

I incline my head in a majestic nod. Even though I’m in a highly undignified pose, seated and bound and at my husband’s mercy, I’ve never felt more powerful. “I don’t like a lot of things about this mission. I think you’re playing a dangerous game making Kit O’Kelly such a public figure. I think being so close to Peter Sanchez is going to end up hurting you in the end. And I most definitely wish you’d spend more time sleeping and less time gallivanting about with Eden St. James.”

A slow smile spreads across Grant’s face at that last one.

“But—” I say, refusing to let that smile turn my limbs to liquid. It’s a close thing, though. “We work best when we work as a team. If you need me to watch Lola, then that’s what I’ll do. Let’s finish this, Grant. Let’s find this guy so we can go home. Alive. Together.”

His coffee-black eyes, always so dark, turn even darker. “Together,” he echoes.

“And I think you can go ahead and cut me loose now,” I say, straining against my bonds. “I’m plenty interrogated now.”

Grant must not agree with me, because he doesn’t, as expected, let me go. He stays exactly where he is instead, those dark eyes never leaving mine.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, a slight waver in my voice. “We’re done now. We should head back upstairs.”

“But Kit O’Kelly is a man who likes to take his time, remember?” he asks with a quick glance at his watch. “By my estimation, we have a good fifteen minutes before anyone starts to ask questions.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” I jerk against my bonds again, but it’s no use. “You’re supposed to be doing less activity, Grant. Not more. Not—Ohhh.” The moan escapes before I can stop it, and I jump as one of his fingers slips underneath the hem of my skirt. The legs of the chair give a small leap from the ground with me.

“You’re the one who said we need to make this look convincing,” he taunts.

And I regret it. I regret everything. “Maybe you should just rough me up a little instead.”

“I’m going to have to do a lot more than that.” His voice is a low croon. “Nothing but torture will satisfy this bloodthirsty crowd.”

“Grant, you sneaking, traitorous—”

“And nothing but torture will satisfy this bloodthirsty man,” he adds with a deepening grin. “Unless you want me to stop? It could be days before we’re alone together again…”

The firm and insistent movement of his hand up my skirt stops as he awaits my answer. Which is silly, because we both already know what I’m going to say.

Touch me, tease me, take me.

Grant Emerson, FBI agent and mule-headed guard dog, always has been and always will be my biggest weakness.

Fortunately for us both, he’s also my greatest strength.

“I hope you have a lot more in mind than just tying me to a chair and smirking at me,” I say, tilting my chin up in a gesture of defiance and acceptance. “You won’t break me that easily.”

“Don’t rush me,” he says. “There’s a fine art to intimidation. It’s all about the anticipation, the slow reveal of the intended instruments of torture, the promise of what’s to come—”

“Yes, well, I’ve just been given a very important top-secret assignment,” I say. “So if you could speed things along…”

He doesn’t.

He begins by slowly rolling up his shirtsleeves. That man’s forearms are a gift to womankind, all ropey sinew and hard swells of muscle that he reveals one glorious inch at a time. He also loosens the tie at his collar, completing a look of dishevelment that has me breathing harder.

“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.” Since it’s the only movement I can make, I give a disdainful sniff. “You’re going to have to work harder than that.”

“I haven’t even warmed up yet,” he warns as he kicks off his shoes.

That part I do find slightly alarming, mostly because the second his shoes come off, all chances of me tracking his movements disappear with them. This room is loud, and he moves so silently when he walks—rob him of that piece of rubber between sole and floor, and it becomes virtually impossible to know when and where he’ll strike next.

As if to prove this, he slips behind me.

That’s when the slow reveal of torture instruments starts to happen. The first is a breath of warm air on the nape of my neck. There’s something haunting about that sensation coming from a virtually undetectable source, especially since the pattern of his movements is familiar. Up and down over the gentle slope of my shoulder, lingering painfully long over the sensitive spot behind my ear. I twitch but don’t move, though at considerable cost to my self-control.

“Bo-ring,” I claim in a singsong voice. “It’s just air.”

His lips are the second torture device. They land unerringly on my pulse point, the soft pressure sending my heartbeat into overdrive—especially since he follows up that first gentle kiss with a succession of decreasingly gentle kisses. Each press of his mouth against my skin is its own kind of agony.

“You won’t leave here until I get what I want from you,” he mocks in a low voice as his lips reach my ear.

He doesn’t wait for a response before continuing his assault. Under my chin, down my neck, along the delicate ridge of my clavicle… By the time he reaches the upper swell of my chest, I’m breathing heavy and seeing stars.

“Is it a confession you’re after?” I manage to ask. “Because I have nothing to confess. For the first time in my life, I’m completely innocent.”

“No, not a confession.” He continues moving further downward, landing more of those kisses on the line of my bra. Inadvertently, I arch closer, mentally willing him to flick a tongue inside the fabric. He anticipates my desire and stops himself short.

That’s the first rule of surviving an interrogation, I guess. Never show your captor your weaknesses, or he’ll use them.

“Do you want my secrets?” I ask, a low moan escaping my lips as he continues ignoring my body’s pleas for more. He opts instead to stroll casually in front of me, pure masculine arrogance glinting in his eye.

“For the first time in my life, I don’t have any of those, either,” I add. “I’ve been too busy trying to ferret out yours.”

“No, not secrets.” His lips lift in a smile that crinkles all the way up to his hairline. “You’ve never been as good at keeping those as you like to think.”

Rude. There’s plenty about me that he doesn’t know yet. Just this morning, Lola showed me a trick for converting decimal points to fractions in my head. I’m a trove of hidden mysteries.

“Well, out with it, then,” I say. “We don’t have all day.”

I try not to let his stare intimidate me into saying more, but it’s hard—mostly because his stare is concentrated a little too closely on the spread of my legs. His gaze has the ability to turn my insides to fire under almost any circumstances. In these circumstances, the fiery feeling is rapidly taking over every other sense I have.

“What I want is for you to beg.”

I laugh. In all the time we’ve been together, that’s the one thing he’s never been able to get from me. “No way,” I vow.

His smile deepens until I swear it’s the only thing in the room. “We’ll see about that.”

That’s when he breaks out the third and most effective torture device in his arsenal—his hands. I knew it was coming, all his playful manipulation leading to this, but the reality is so much worse than I expect.

He begins, as he so often does, by landing his palm on my cheek, cupping my face in a gesture of affection. He’s so sweet, so loving, so tender.

The sadist.

From there, he moves his hands over my body in a manner than can best be described as an assault. I’ve never had acupressure before, but I know the basics—there are certain points in the body that, when pressed, restore balance to the body. What Grant does is the exact opposite. He knows all the points of my body that, when pressed, makes me lose control. Face and shoulders and breasts. Calves and knees and thighs. He moves slowly and with deliberation over some parts, quick and efficient over others.

It’s when his hand starts snaking a very careful upward path between my legs that I really start to worry.

“Are you ready to beg yet?” he asks. He looks to be in control of himself, eyes dark and movements assured, but I can tell from his labored breathing that he’s not as much a master of this situation as he’d like. “I can make this quick and painless on you, but you have to say the words.”

“Never,” I manage once again, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold out. I can’t help it. I miss him—miss our playful lovemaking, this give-and-take battle that defines our life together.

I also can’t help but think about what awaits us on the decks above. If anything were to happen to this man, this other half of me, I don’t know what I would do.

Yes, I do. I’d take down this ship and all the people on it. I’d seek vengeance on every last person who put him at risk.

I might even beg.

“Suit yourself,” he says in a singsong voice that does dangerous things to my heartbeat. “Just know this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me.”

He means every word. The stroke of his fingers up my thighs and between my legs is an agony. He hits all the spots that drive me to distraction but none of the ones that push me over the edge. The slick slide of his thumb and forefinger against my core has me growing hot and biting down on my tongue, but I don’t give him what he wants.

Nor does he give me what I want. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so close to release, every nerve ending straining for him to move a fraction of an inch and end my miseries, but I don’t do it.

“Sorry, my love,” I say, throwing his favorite term of endearment right back in his face. “I’m sticking to this one. You can deny me all the orgasms you want, but this girl doesn’t beg for anything. Or anyone.” I can’t help feeling inordinately proud of myself for holding out. “Turns out I’m pretty good at this secret spy stuff, aren’t I?”

Grant releases a shaky laugh, looking none too comfortable himself over there. The tight pants he’s wearing outline every inch of his lower half, including the part of him that has been enjoying this torture session in ways I should probably worry about. “The problem with you, Penelope Blue, is that you live to thwart me.”

“And the problem with you,” I retort, “is that you love it.”

It’s true, and he knows it—a fact proven by the movement of his thumb the necessary fraction of an inch to bring all my agonies to a shuddering, spiraling halt. The delayed gratification—of my orgasm and of us finally being alone together—work in tandem to send my head whirling and my body screaming.

I don’t think I actually scream, though—or if I do, the sound is swallowed by the engine room’s constant clanging. Funny that I ever thought this room was unpleasant. I think I could grow to love the scent of marine fuel oil.

It takes a moment for my head to clear, another to realize that the clanging appears to be coming from the door. Alarmed, I glance at Grant and am immediately reassured by what I see. He doesn’t look scared for our safety; he bears the frustrated look of a man interrupted with his panting, sated wife. This is borne out when Riker’s voice sounds through the thick metal.

“Sorry to interrupt, but Lola’s asking for you, Pen,” he calls. “Are you done being tortured yet?”

Grant’s groan clearly indicates what he thinks of Riker’s not-so-timely arrival, but I can’t help laughing. This is what he gets for trying to get the best of Penelope Blue. No one beats me at my own game.

“Not a single word out of you,” he says with a raised finger in my direction. “And try if you can to look at least a little less pleased with yourself.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promise and try for a frown. “How’s this?”

“Terrible,” he says and drops a quick kiss on my mouth. He lingers just long enough to press his forehead against mine, the gesture familiar and comforting and, because I honestly have no idea when I’ll be able to feel it again, heartrending. “Thank you, Penelope.”

“For what?”

“For not begging. For never giving in. For being you.” His breath is warm on my lips. “I’m afraid things are going to get worse before they get better.”

“I figured as much.”

“But you understand that it has to be this way,” he says, his words not so much a question as a plea. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s just for a few more days. You know how much I love you, right?”

The answer is, as always, “I do.”