If we didn’t?
We were going to be burning our way through Eastern Europe until we found her.
“I’ll be fine,” Lainey said, cupping Adam’s cheek with her palm. “I have a knife on the inside of my thigh and I’ll have my baton and a taser in my purse.”
All weapons she’d need to close the distance with to use. Then again, if Lainey needed weapons at all it would be because someone closed in around us already.
After she set her clutch down on the nightstand, she came to me and brushed my fingers aside from the tie. “Let me,” she said and I trailed my fingers down her bare shoulders, just for the excuse to touch her while she began knotting the tie in short, direct motions.
“Thank you,” I told her and when she was done, I dipped my head to kiss her. The gleam of her lipstick said it was a gloss, but I didn’t want to smudge it.
Well, that was a bit of a lie, I’d love to smudge it. Especially if I had her mouth wrapped around my cock. Or anywhere else really.
“Later,” she said, as though she could read the lust in my eyes. Fuck, maybe she could. It wasn’t like I could hide it anymore.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
When she picked up my jacket, I let her hold it while I slid my arms into it. The gun I wore under it was hidden well. As tailored suits went, it wasn’t the best. But we’d had to get them on short notice, so I wouldn’t complain.
I tracked Lainey as she drifted toward Adam. He just held out his tie to her. There was a stillness to Lainey, a hesitation of action. Like everything she needed to do and say was on hold, bubbling under the surface and just waiting to explode out of her.
If I had to guess, she was keeping herself under rigid control. I hated it though. I preferred it when Lainey could let herself just be. Fuck, who was I kidding, I liked it when we could all just be who we were.
This wasn’t one of those times. We were trapped by the world we inhabited. There were rules we couldn’t break, and lines we should never stretch. Yet, we’d done all of that. Tonight was about shoring up a potential ally, but it was also about taking another step in the direction to find Andrea.
One was far more important than the other. And as much as I wanted to find their sister, I was also a selfish bastard. I didn’t want to lose either one of them to do it.
Lainey smoothed down Adam’s shirt after she finished the tie. Then she reached for his shoulder holster and helped him slip it on.
“You don’t have to go,” Adam told her quietly. “Ezra and I can handle the meeting. We can take Bodhi with us, you and Milo stay here while we deal with this.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Unless you really don’t want me there, then let’s go ahead and fight about that so I can win and we can go.”
I snorted a laugh at the bland, easy delivery.
“What?” Lainey said, glancing at me over her shoulder. “Do you think I won’t win?”
Adam settled his hands on her bare shoulders and she faced him once more. The closeness between them seemed to blur away all the hard edges. They belonged in that bubble of closeness. Their mutual grief and terror bonding them further.
“Of course you’ll win,” Adam said without an ounce of irony or argument. “But you shouldn’t have to do this if it’s going to upset you any more than you already are. You did the hard part. You got us a lead and you dealt with a problem.”
Dealt with a problem. She dealt with it all right. She ended the shopkeeper. The woman would disappear and become just another mystery. I might experience a twinge of guilt if she hadn’t been involved. That said, she participated in trafficking and stealing girls.
She could die in a hole, buried alive for all I cared. As it was, Lainey ended it quickly for her. Maybe too quick, but again, the printer wasn’t the important one.
“I admit,” Lainey said as she leaned into Adam and stretched a hand out behind her. I wrapped my hand around hers and closed in against her back. Then Adam and I were wrapped around her. “I want nothing to do with some technically challenging meal where we have to make nice with criminals.”
I opened my mouth to correct that, then just let it go. She wasn’t wrong. They were criminals. Not that we were much better. Not a point to argue on. “You don’t have to,” I assured her, dropping my head so I could press a kiss to the bare skin below the collar of her halter. “You don’t have to do a damn thing.”
“Ezra’s right,” Adam agreed with me, but I doubted he thought she’d take him up on it any more than I did. “If you want or need to sit this out, we’ll take care of it.”
Lainey lifted her head and leaned back against me, and I looped a hand around her waist. “Can I tell you how much I like that this is a discussion and not an order?”
“Orders never really worked on you,” Adam told her without a hint of apology.
“Never stopped you from barking them out.” The smile in her words belied the accusation.
“No, because I will always choose your safety first. Always.”
Adam had one hand on my shoulder and the other cupping her chin. His gaze bored into hers and I drank in the sight of them together.
“As much as I want to lock you away and keep the rest of the world from ever touching you again,” Adam told her in a silky soft tone that wrapped around us like an embrace. It was Adam at his most dangerous.
Indulgent and sweet, wrapped up in the most deliciously dark promises that he meant every single word. Goddamn the man made me hard.
“But?” Lainey prompted him, her smile almost as indulgent as his.
“But—that’s not what you need from me. From any of us. You’re more than our equal, Lainey. It won’t ever stop me from wanting to keep you safe or protecting you every chance I get.”
“It won’t stop any of us,” I added. “Just like it won’t stop you from protecting us.”
I almost said trying to protect us. But Lainey had protected us. My kotyonok was ever fierce with her teeth and her claws.
“That’s the way it should be,” she said and Adam lifted his gaze to meet mine. I read the worry there. The worry he wasn’t sharing with her. The worry for her as much as about her.
“It is the way it should be,” I said, turning the words over even as I spoke them. Adam’s look of reprimand made me grin. That wasn’t what he wanted from me right now. “It is though,” I told him as much as her. “When we’re together, we can look out for each other. Fuck knows, Kotyonok is much prettier than any of us. They’re going to be trying to steal her when they see her tonight.”
Adam’s lips flattened and I had to swallow back a little bit of glee at the retribution-filled promise in his eyes. “You’re not making this case for her.”
