Chapter 13: The Unseen Audience
His lips were dry and insistent on the nape of her neck. A low moan vibrated against her skin, a sound of pure, acquisitive pleasure that made her muscles lock. Camilla stared blindly at the frantic lines of the Basquiat, the colors swimming into a nauseating blur.
“Exquisite,” Martin Gable breathed, the word hot in her ear.His hands, which had been commanding, became exploratory. One slid from her hip, around the front, splaying possessively over her stomach, pulling her back flush against him. She could feel the hard, unmistakable pressure of his erection against the small of her back, through the layers of silk and his tailored trousers.A wave of vertigo swept through her. This wasn’t part of the script Milo had outlined. Get close, plant the device, get out.This was something else entirely.
His other hand released its grip on her hip and came up to the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. Not painfully, but with a firm, undeniable control. He tilted her head, exposing more of her throat, and his mouth trailed open, wet kisses along her shoulder.The crass sound of it filled the silent, tomb-like study.
“Such smooth skin,” he murmured. His tongue, slick and probing, traced a line down her spine, following the deep valley of the backless dress. His free hand came up to the slender zipper at the side of her waist. He tugged it down, the sound a hissing sigh in the quiet room.
The crimson silk, with nothing but her body to hold it up, slackened. It pooled at her waist, held up only by the desperate clamp of her arms crossed over her chest. A frustrated, traitorous sound escaped her lips—a choked gasp that he mistook for passion.“That’s it,” Gable coaxed, his voice thick. “Relax.Let me see you.”
He didn’t ask. His hands closed over hers, still clutching the fabric to her breasts, and pried them away. The dress slid down her body, catching at her hips, leaving only her bra from the waist up. The air in the study, previously warm, felt frigid on her skin. She braced herself against the cold steel of the desk, her knuckles bone-white, her eyes squeezed shut.In Unit 14, Milo watched.
The feed from the camera under the desk was a low, wide-angle view. He could see Gable’s polished shoes, the hem of Camilla’s red dress now bunched around her hips, the long, graceful line of her bare legs leading up to the shadowed junction the camera politely avoided. The audio, however, was pristine.Every wet kiss, every groan, every shuddering breath.
He had zoomed the secondary feed—the one from the smoke detector—in on her face. Her profile was tight, eyes clenched, lips pressed into a bloodless line.
Milo took a slow sip from his glass of bourbon.The ice had mostly melted, watering it down.He didn’t mind. He was analyzing the scene with a detached, editorial focus.Gable’s technique was entitled, clumsy. Predictable.Camilla’s reaction was more interesting. The stiffened spine, the trapped-animal stillness.She wouldn’t fight.He’d calculated that. Fighting would ruin the mission, draw attention, get her thrown out.She would endure.A cold, professional smile touched his lips. He leaned back in the rental’s uncomfortable armchair, the tablet warm on his lap. “This is fun,” he whispered to the empty room, the words a dry crackle in the dark.
Back in the study, Gable’s hands were on her hips again, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh above her ass. He pulled her back against him, grinding himself against her, the friction of his trousers against her bare skin a grotesque violation. He murmured something then, praise that sounded recycled.“A body like a sonnet,” he said, his voice slurred with want. “All perfect cadence and line.”
Camilla felt her mind splitting. One part was screaming, a raw, panicked thing scrambling against the walls of her skull. The other part was watching from a distance, cold and clear: The camera is planted.The mission is accomplished. Now you have to get out.That second part gave her a voice.It emerged strained, thin, but coherent. “Martin… the guests. They’ll wonder where you’ve gone.”
“Let them wonder,” he growled, his mouth against her shoulder blade. One hand slid from her hip, around to the front, kneading her breast as she pretended to be turned on by his antics.
His touch was rough through the lace of her bra, a claiming pressure that made her breath hitch for a real reason she couldn’t name. A confusing heat was spreading beneath the revulsion, a traitorous animal response to the sheer, overwhelming intensity of his focus. Her body, starved for any sensation other than fear for weeks, was betraying her, softening against her will.
Milo saw it on the feed. Her shoulders lost a fraction of their rigidity. Her head tipped back, just a degree, against Gable’s shoulder. The frustrated gasp from earlier morphed into something weaker, more ambiguous. “Well, well,” he muttered, tilting his head. The bourbon was forgotten in his hand. This was an unexpected data point.
Martin felt the shift, the subtle yielding. It galvanized him. “There you are,” he whispered, triumph thick in his voice. He turned her in his arms, the dress now a scarlet puddle around her feet on the dark wood floor. He looked at her, his gaze devouring the sight of her in just her underwear, her skin flushed in the low light. He leaned in, his expensive cologne and the sour note of champagne on his breath filling the space between them.
His lips parted. Camilla’s eyes fluttered shut, not in anticipation, but in a dizzying surrender to the storm of conflicting signals firing through her nerves. Their mouths were a breath apart.
A sharp, rapid knocking fractured the moment.
Gable froze. Camilla’s eyes snapped open.
The knocking came again, polite but insistent. “Mr. Gable? Sir?” A young, anxious voice filtered through the heavy oak. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but there’s an urgent matter with the auctioneer. He needs your signature immediately for the lot discrepancies.”
Martin Gable’s face transformed. The lustful haze evaporated, replaced by instant, volcanic irritation. He scowled, his head whipping toward the door. “Not now!”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” the waiter’s voice trembled. “He said it cannot wait. The bidding is stalled.”
With a final, crushing squeeze of her bare waist, Gable released her. He took two sharp strides to the door, yanking it open. A pale young man in a white jacket stood there, eyes wide. “You interrupt me for this?” Gable hissed, his voice low and venomous. “Get out. Handle it yourself.”
The waiter stammered an apology and fled. Gable slammed the door shut. The framed paintings on the wall rattled. He turned back to Camilla, who had hastily pulled her dress back up to her shoulders, clutching the silk to her chest. Her relief was a physical ache, but it was muddied by a deep, unsettling confusion. For a second there, her body had… answered.
“Damn incompetents,” Gable grumbled, straightening his tuxedo jacket. The predatory intimacy was gone, replaced by the busy irritation of a host. The switch was chilling. He glanced at her, his gaze still appreciative but now distant, already moving on to the next problem. “This is a disaster of timing. We’ll have to continue this another time, my dear. I’m needed downstairs.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He simply opened the door and strode out, leaving it gaping open behind him. The sounds of the gala—a swell of music, a burst of laughter—flooded into the silent study.
Camilla stood alone, trembling. She fumbled with the side zipper, her hands shaking too badly to get it on the first try. The cool air on her back now felt like a reprieve, but her skin still hummed where his hands had been. She felt stained. And worst of all, a part of her felt cheated of a conclusion she never wanted. She grabbed her clutch and practically ran from the room.
In the safe house, Milo slammed his empty glass down on the side table. The feed had gone silent after the door opened, just ambient party noise. “Perfect,” he groaned to the dark room, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Just when it was getting interesting.” He’d wanted to see how far she would bend, what that melt would look like. The interruption robbed him of the data.
Twenty minutes later, his burner phone buzzed. He answered on the first ring. “Well?”
Her voice was a thin wire. “I’m outside. It’s done. The device is placed.”
“I know it’s placed. I was watching.” The line was silent. He could almost hear her trying to parse that, to understand what he’d seen. “Get in a cab. Don’t come straight here. Take two, switch midway.”
“Okay.”
He heard the unsteadiness in that single word. “Camilla. Did he suspect anything?”
“No.” The answer was too quick. “No, he didn’t suspect a thing.”
Milo smiled, a cold, private expression. He’d heard the shift in her breathing on the audio, the faint, traitorous sigh. She was hiding her own reaction, even from him. That was useful. “Good. Then the mission was a success. Now get home. We have audio to review.”
The cab ride was a blur of neon streaks and the driver’s staticky talk radio. Camilla followed Milo’s instructions, paying in cash and switching vehicles at a brightly lit gas station, her reflection in the dark window looking hollow and unfamiliar. Every nerve still hummed with the phantom press of Gable’s hands, a greasy feeling no amount of cold night air could scrub away.
She let herself into the beige safe house, the door’s click a sound of terrible finality. Milo was already at the small table, his laptop open, wires snaking to an external drive. The room’s only light came from the screen, etching his profile in pale blue.
“Sit,” he said, not looking up. His voice was all business. “It’s syncing.”
She dropped her clutch on the counter and obeyed, pulling out the other chair. The crimson dress, now felt like a costume she couldn’t take off, chafed against her skin. She wanted to burn it. “What did you see?” she asked, the question hanging between them.
“Enough.” He finally glanced at her, his gray eyes scanning her face, reading the aftermath like a headline. “You got the job done. That’s what matters.” He turned back to the screen, dismissing her trauma as operational debris. “Audio’s ready. The device has a twelve-hour buffer. It should have captured everything from the moment you stuck it on until the room went quiet.”
He hit play.
For a few seconds, there was only the faint, hollow hum of an empty room. Then, the distinct sound of the study door opening and closing. Their own voices, distorted and tinny from the underside of the desk, filled the small kitchen.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Gable’s recorded voice oozed.
Hearing it again, from this detached vantage, made Camilla’s stomach clench. She listened to her own strained replies, the wet sounds of his kisses, the rustle of fabric. It was a clinical dissection of her violation. She dug her nails into her palms, focusing on the sharp pain to stay present.
Milo listened with his chin propped on his fist, his expression unreadable. He fast-forwarded through a stretch of heavy breathing and muffled groans. “Skip to the waiter’s interruption,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
The audio jumped. The knocking, the waiter’s panicked voice, Gable’s furious dismissal. The slam of the door. Then, Gable’s annoyed grumble about “incompetents.” The sound of his footsteps moving away.
Then, nothing. Just that empty-room hum.
“That’s it?” Milo’s brow furrowed. He leaned forward, checking the file’s timeline. “He just left. He didn’t make a call, didn’t talk to himself, nothing.” He sounded almost disappointed. The audio had captured the assault, but not the conspiracy.
Camilla was about to speak, to release the breath she’d been holding, when a new sound hissed from the speakers.
A different door opened. A softer click. Not the main study door. A hidden one.
Milo froze, his finger hovering over the trackpad.
Heavy, confident footsteps entered the room. A different man’s voice, younger, sharper, with a slight nasal quality, spoke. “Where were you? We didn't see you for a while during the auction."
“You know exactly where I was,” Gable’s recorded voice replied, a smug, conspiratorial tone replacing his earlier fury. Footsteps moved closer to the desk. A glass clinked, liquid poured. “Dealing with a potential donor. A very persuasive young woman from the urban relief sector. Camilla Flores.”
“Persuasive how?” the other man asked, his voice dripping with implication.
Gable gave a low, rough laugh. “Let’s just say she was exceedingly motivated. Wearing a dress that was basically a suggestion. I had her bent over the desk right where you’re standing. An absolutely exceptional ass.” He sighed, the sound full of theatrical regret. “We were getting to the good part when that idiot waiter started banging on the door about some paperwork. Completely killed the mood.”
The other man chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “A tragedy. But business before pleasure, Martin. Always.”
“Don’t I know it.” Gable’s tone shifted, the levity evaporating. The clink of glass again. “The shipment. Is it prepped?”
“Sealed and manifest filed. ‘Agricultural equipment’ for Costa Verde. It loads at Dock Seven, Berth Twelve, tomorrow at 0300.” The man’s voice dropped. “The sixteen from the Henderson home are pre-sedated. They’ll be delivered to the container by 0200. The driver is ours.”
“Payment structure?”
“Half upfront, wired to the Aegis account. The rest on confirmed delivery. Our friends are getting impatient, Martin. The last batch had… complications.”
“The last batch had a girl who wouldn’t stop screaming,” Gable said flatly. “This one will be quieter. See that it is.”
Milo’s pen was a frantic blur in the notebook open beside his laptop. Dock 7, Berth 12. 0300. Henderson 16. Pre-sedated. His heart hammered against his ribs, a steady, percussive beat of triumph. This was it. The direct link. The evidence.
On the audio, the men exchanged a few more logistical details—a truck ID, a frequency for clean radio communication—before their footsteps receded and the hidden door clicked shut. Then, true silence.
Milo stopped the recording. The sudden quiet in the safe house kitchen was deafening. He looked at Camilla. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, not with fear now, but with a kind of horrified clarity. The crude recounting of her assault, reduced to a locker-room anecdote, seemed to have stunned her more than the act itself.
“We have them,” Milo said, his voice low and intense. He tapped the notebook. “Times, locations, methods. A direct confession of human trafficking. This is the story.”
“They’re loading children onto a ship in,” she checked her phone, her hand trembling slightly, “nine hours.”
“They are.” Milo stood up, the chair legs scraping harshly against the linoleum. He began pacing the small space, a caged energy radiating from him. “I need to get to that dock. I need photos, more audio, maybe even intercept…”
“Intercept?” Camilla stood now too, facing him. “Milo, we have to call the police. Now. We have the recording. We give it to them, they raid the dock, they stop it.”
He stopped pacing and looked at her as if she’d spoken in another language. “And hand the scoop of a lifetime to some public information officer? No. This is mine. I break it. I need to be there to document it.” He was already grabbing his jacket, his mind racing ahead to lenses and vantage points.
“You can’t be serious! This isn’t a scoop, it’s a crime in progress!” Her voice rose, cracking with urgency. “Those are kids from the Henderson home. My kids. We have to stop it, not just photograph it!”
“Stopping it is the story, Camilla!” he snapped, turning on her. “But it has to be done right. If we call the cops now, with what? An anonymous tip? They’ll bungle it, Gable will get a whisper, and the shipment vanishes. Or worse, the cops are on his payroll. We need irrefutable, real-time evidence I control.”
“So what’s your plan? Go play action hero and hope you don’t get shot?” She stepped into his path, blocking his way to the door. The red dress was rumpled, her hair was a mess, but her gaze was fierce.
“My plan is to adapt,” he said, his eyes gleaming with a cold, strategic light. “You stay here. You’re safe. I’ll go scout the dock, see what the security layout is, then I’ll make the call. From a burner. With coordinates.”
“I’m not staying here,” she said, the words leaving her mouth before she could think. The thought of being alone in this beige box, waiting, while he ran toward the very danger she wanted to stop, was unbearable.
“Yes,” he said, moving to step around her. “You are.”
He misjudged the cramped space. His foot caught on the leg of her abandoned chair. He stumbled forward, off-balance. Instinctively, he threw out a hand, which landed on her shoulder, but his momentum was too great.
They went down together in a tangle of limbs.
He landed mostly on top of her, his weight driving the air from her lungs in a soft oof. The cheap carpet scraped against her bare shoulders. He caught himself on his forearms at the last second, his face hovering inches above hers.
For a suspended moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The frantic energy of their argument shattered, replaced by a sudden, profound physical awareness. His body was lean and solid against hers. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart through his shirt, or maybe it was her own.
He looked down at her, his sharp gray eyes scanning her face. The anger and urgency bled away, replaced by something else, something more intimate and calculating. A slow smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. His gaze dropped to her lips, which were parted as she struggled to catch her breath.
The air in the room grew thick and still. The distant hum of the refrigerator faded away. All she could see was the weathered lines of his face, the salt-and-pepper stubble along his jaw, the intensity of his focus now entirely on her.
Her earlier confusion in Gable’s study—the traitorous heat—reared up again, but this was different. This was a current, clean and dangerous. Her eyes fluttered shut.
He leaned in. She felt the warmth of his breath first, then the faint, electric promise of his lips a millimeter from hers. The scent of him—bourbon, cheap soap, ink—filled her senses. Every nerve in her body was a live wire, taut and singing.
The blaring, tinny ringtone of his burner phone shattered the silence.
It was like a bucket of ice water. Milo scowled, a fierce, frustrated curse hissing through his teeth. He pushed himself off her, the moment splintering into a thousand sharp pieces.
Camilla rolled onto her side, pulling her knees up, a wave of cold relief and bewildered disappointment washing over her.
Her lips tingled where they hadn’t even been touched.
Milo snatched the buzzing phone from the table, his movements sharp with thwarted energy. “Yeah.” He listened, his back to her, his shoulders tense. “Where?” A pause. “Fine. Twenty minutes.” He ended the call and shoved the phone into his jacket pocket without turning around. “That was my guy at the port. Something’s shifted. The timeline’s moved up.”
He finally looked at her, but the moment on the floor was gone, walled off behind his professional focus. “I have to go verify. You stay. Lock up. Don’t answer the door for anyone.”
“Milo, wait—”
“There’s no time.” He was already at the door, grabbing the external hard drive and his notebook. He paused, his hand on the knob. “Get some sleep. You look wrecked. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
Then he was gone. The door clicked shut, leaving her alone on the floor of the silent, beige room.
Camilla pulled herself up, her body aching in strange places. She walked to the window, peering through the blinds at the empty parking lot. She saw his silhouette hurry to the nondescript sedan, then watched the red taillights disappear into the wet, black street. The rain had started, a fine mist that blurred the world.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass. Her mind replayed the two near-misses in a dizzying loop.
Martin Gable’s kiss had been an inevitability, a foul transaction conducted in a room that smelled of cigars and arrogance. She had braced for it, her body a rigid plank, her mind screaming no even as her traitorous nerves had flickered to life under the sheer force of his unwanted attention. She had wanted it only in the sense that a door wants to be opened, to end the awful pressure of waiting.
But Milo…
Milo’s almost-kiss was a choice that had crackled in the air between them. It was born from adrenaline and a shared, dangerous secret. She had felt the heat of him, seen the calculation in his eyes shift into something more primal. She had closed her eyes. She had wanted it. Not to end something, but to start it. To feel something sharp and real that wasn’t fear, to tangle with a man who saw her as a complicated tool rather than a simple trophy.
The difference left her feeling unmoored. One man made her skin crawl with the memory of his touch. The other made it hum with the memory of his near-miss.
She turned from the window, the red dress suddenly intolerable. She peeled it off, leaving it in a heap on the linoleum, and stepped into a scalding shower. The water couldn’t wash away the confusion, but it eased the physical chill. She pulled on an old t-shirt from her bag, turned off all the lights, and crawled into the unfamiliar bed.
Sleep was a distant country. She lay in the dark, listening to the rain and the echo of a voice on a recording: “An absolutely exceptional ass.” The children from the Henderson home had names. Kaitlyn, who loved horses. Diego, who drew elaborate spaceships. They were pre-sedated now, headed for a container. And Milo was out there in the rain, chasing the story.
Milo drove through the industrial port district, the wipers slapping a steady rhythm against the drizzle. The streets were canyon walls of corrugated steel and chain-link. He found his source, a wiry man named Finn who worked the night shift at a customs brokerage, huddled under the awning of a shuttered diner.
“They moved it,” Finn said, his breath clouding in the damp air. “Dock Seven, Berth Nine. Now, one AM. Not three.”
“Why?”
“Tide tables, they said. Bullshit. They got spooked.”
Milo handed over a folded envelope of cash. “Security?”
“Two on the gate. Private, not port authority. Armed. One roaming the berth. Truck arrives at twelve-forty. Ship’s the Marianne, Panamanian flag.” Finn pocketed the envelope and melted back into the shadows. “Don’t get dead, Davidson.”
Milo returned to Unit 14 just after eleven. The safe house was dark and quiet. He stood for a moment outside Camilla’s door, Unit 13, listening. Nothing. Good. Let her have the night off from the mess he’d pulled her into.
Inside his own unit, he dumped his gear on the table. The adrenaline of the recon was fading, leaving a familiar, hollow buzz. He poured two fingers of bourbon, not bothering with ice, and sank into the stiff armchair.
His mind drifted back to the feel of Camilla under him on the carpet, the shock of her body yielding, the soft sound of her breath catching. He took a slow sip, the liquor burning a pleasant path down his throat. She was deeper than he’d initially pegged. Tough, but with a vulnerability that wasn’t performative. It was a compelling combination.
The near-kiss had been a mistake, a lapse in operational discipline. But the memory of it, the raw potential, was a pleasant warmth in his gut. He’d bed her soon enough. After the story broke, when the pressure was off. It would be a satisfying capstone to the whole messy, rewarding affair.
He was contemplating the logistics of that—her place or his, the right bottle of wine to lower her post-crisis defenses—when a knock sounded at his door.
Not a polite tap. A firm, rapid bang-bang-bang.
His hand went to the lockpick set he kept in the side table drawer, his body tensing. It was too loud for Finn, too impatient for the building manager. He moved silently to the door, peered through the peephole.
A young woman stood in the poorly-lit hallway, her back to the door as she looked down the empty corridor. She had a wild mane of fiery red hair, damp from the rain, and was wearing a college sweatshirt and jeans that were artfully ripped at the knees.
Milo’s posture relaxed a fraction. He recognized the profile, the set of the shoulders. He unchained and opened the door.
“It’s about time—” she began, turning as the door gave way.
Her momentum was already carrying her forward. The toe of her sneaker caught on the raised threshold. She let out a yelp of surprise and pitched headlong into the room.
Milo had no time to step back. She crashed into him, a tangle of limbs and damp fabric. They went down hard, him absorbing the impact as his back hit the thin carpet. The air left his lungs in a grunt.
She landed squarely on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips, her hands splayed on his chest. Her face was inches from his, her green eyes wide with shock. A few freckles stood out across her nose. She smelled of rain, cheap strawberry shampoo, and nervous energy.
Milo blinked up at her, the breath slowly returning to his body. One eyebrow arched. Her weight was considerable, and undeniably pleasant. A slow, familiar chuckle rumbled in his chest.
“Well, hello Rachel,” he said, his voice a dry rasp. “I’m happy to see you again, too. You’ve perfected your entrance.”
Rachel Morgan’s initial shock melted into a wry, embarrassed smile. She didn’t scramble off him. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then back to his eyes, a flicker of memory passing between them. “Yeah. Seems like we always end up on the floor, doesn’t it?”
She pushed herself up, shifting her weight, and in doing so, her hips pressed down against him. Milo’s other eyebrow joined the first. Her lips were now inches from his again, the ghost of their previous relationship hanging in the air.
“So,” he said, not moving, his hands coming to rest lightly on her denim-clad hips. “What’s a nice girl like you doing knocking on a dangerous door like mine at midnight?”
Rachel’s smile turned sharper, more determined. She leaned down, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m here about a case. My college. The financial aid office is a front for something. And the money,” she said, her green eyes locking onto his, “all the funny money, it trails back to a philanthropist on a bunch of trustee boards. A guy named Martin Gable.”
The name hung in the air between them, a charged piece of shrapnel that made Milo’s hands, already resting on her hips, tighten instinctively. Martin Gable. The same damn name threading through every dark corner of his life.
Rachel felt the change in him, the shift from surprised amusement to a razor-focused intensity. His gray eyes darkened, scanning her face as if reading microfiche. “Gable,” he repeated, the word flat. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
He made no move to push her off. Her position, straddling him on the floor, seemed suddenly incidental, a quirk of geography he was using to his advantage, keeping her close, captive to his interrogation.
The warmth of him beneath her, the solid press of his thighs against hers, was a distraction she had to consciously ignore. She took a breath, the smell of old carpet and his cheap cologne filling her nose. “It’s the financial aid disbursements. I work part-time in the administration office, filing. The numbers for the ‘Civic Leadership Grant’—it’s a fund Gable’s philanthropy foundation set up—they don’t add up. The outgoing amounts are huge, but the student recipient list is tiny. Most of the checks are cut to shell companies. ‘Tri-State Educational Supplies.’ ‘Campus Infrastructure Partners.’ I looked them up. They’re PO boxes. Ghosts.”
Milo’s mind was already connecting wires. The dirty money from whatever Gable was into—the shipping containers, the secret meetings—needed a wash. A clean, respectable, tax-deductible conduit. A university was perfect.
“You copied files,” he stated, not asked.
“Pictures. On my phone.” She shifted, her weight settling more firmly against him, and a flicker of something that wasn’t about the files passed through his eyes. A calculated spark. “I got spooked. My boss, Mr. Claybourne, he’s on the board with Gable. He started asking why I was pulling old grant files. He was too nice about it. It felt wrong.”
“Smart girl,” Milo murmured, and the praise felt like a physical caress. His hands, which had been still, began to move. Not pushing her away. Tracing slow, deliberate circles on her denim-clad hips through the soft fabric of her sweatshirt. “And you brought it to me. Why?”
“Because you’re the only person I know who isn’t scared of anything,” she said, her voice dropping. Her own hands were still braced on his chest. She could feel the steady beat of his heart. “And because last time… you listened.”
Last time. The phrase hung there, loaded with the memory of a different hotel room, different fears, and the way he’d chased those fears away with a kind of ruthless, distracting comfort.