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“Yeah?” Ducking closer as the plane begins moving, I take the soft skin of her neck between my lips and taste her. Savor her. “We could make a bet.”
“Again?” She tilts her head back to give me room to work. “We’re here because of a bet.”
“That you lost.” I nip at her warm flesh and groan when she jumps. Her breath catches, and her heart pounds too quickly. Too wildly against my cheek. “It’s okay to admit intimidation, Doctor Mayet. You made a bet. You lost. To do so a second time would be daunting.”
“You’re a very obvious man, Archer.” And yet, she lifts her hand from my lap and cups the back of my head instead. To keep me close. To refuse me the chance to stop touching. “You attempt to use my competitive streak against me.”
“Why not use the tools at my disposal?” I slide my fingers over the front of her chest. Tracing the lines of her collarbone. Pausing at the dip between. “You’re a proud woman, and I’m not unwilling to exploit another’s weaknesses. Even yours.”
She chokes out a laugh that breaks us both. I was going for serious. Hard. Taunting. But now she has me smiling like the lovesick idiot I am. “You want to make a bet and pretend it’s for my own good? When we both know you well enough to acknowledge you just want me naked and barefoot for your own pleasure.”
“I’ve never hidden my desires.” I take her glass, so I’m holding both stems in one hand, then I capture her lips with mine as the jet speeds up. We’re on the runway, and in about five seconds flat, my stomach is going to drop out the bottom of my ass and leave me feeling queasy.
But strong, intimidating men don’t admit that kind of stuff.
Malones sure as fuck don’t admit that stuff.
“Give me two weeks of uninterrupted time with you, Mayet. No clothes preferred. And I’ll show you how stimulated you can be without having to activate your brain at all.”
“No dice.” Sniggering, she lifts her legs higher and rests them on my thighs. We’re no longer sitting side-by-side. But rather, we’re wrapped up in each other. Tangled together and heading toward the best damn vacation she’ll ever know. “But if you think you can’t not work unless there’s a bet on the line…”
“I don’t even like my job,” I taunt. “I could go a year without calling the precinct and not break a sweat.”
“Liar.” She pulls back, but only so far that she can set her cheek on my shoulder and look up into my eyes. “Bet you twenty-four naked hours you can’t go the rest of today without calling Fletch.”
“Twenty-four naked hours with you, or a phone call with Detective Fletcher?” My laughter comes with an edge of desperation as the plane’s wheels leave the ground and the engines roar with power. I fight against my every instinct to close my eyes. To swallow the nerves in my throat. I silently wish for the damn plane to level out, so I can set these glasses down, and use my newly freed hand to cup my wife’s ass instead.
But it’s quick, at least. Mercifully, take off is fast when you’re in a Skystream and heading toward forty-one thousand feet.
“I’ll take that bet.” I lose my battle with badassery and swallow anyway, the gulp audible to my ears. “But after one phone call. So we’re squared away.”
“See!” She laughs, drawing the eyes of Jacinta from her perch just outside the cockpit. “You say I’m a workaholic, but you feel the need to call Fletch andsquare things away.” She shakes her head. “You have a problem.”
“I have responsibilities,” I counter. Though as we approach seven-and-a-half miles in the air, I breathe a little easier. I place the flutes on the table and take care to make sure they’re stable. “I have one phone call to make, then I’m set for a whole week.” I lick my dry lips and study her slightly upturned eyes. “How will you cope?”
“First of all,” she places her hands on my chest, her lips quirking up until a deep, perfect dimple pops on her cheek, “you said twenty-four hours. Not a week.”
“Don’t think you can do it?”
“Well… yes.” Her nose wrinkles in scorn. “Icould. But that wasn’t the bet we made. Details matter, Detective Malone. As a homicide cop, one would think you were a detail-oriented man.”
“Nah.” I bring my hand up and tuck a lock of brown hair behind her ear. “Mostly I work from a list I compiled two decades ago. People who’ve wronged me.”
Her eyes flicker between mine. “What?”
“Anyone who screwed me over. If they made the list, then that means they’ll eventually be found guilty of murder. It doesn’t actually bother me who killed the poor sap whose file landed on my desk. I have to get through the list first.”
She snickers, shaking her head. And yet, she curls tighter into my arms. “If the wrong person overheard you saying that stuff, you’d be in so much trouble.”
“Nobody scares me.” I slide my fingers beneath her chin and drag her face up, so I get an unimpeded view. “Nobody on this planet. Except you. Now make your call. We both know you’ll want to speak with Aubs. I’ll call Fletch. We get five minutes each. Then it’s done.”
“I’ll wait until we get to wherever we’re going.” Snuggling closer, she somehow accepts her ride in a billionaire’s jet, curling into the leather and sipping expensive champagne like it’s just another Monday.
She fits into this lifestyle the way she was born to do.
She doesn’t understand yet that this planedoesn’tbelong to Estefan Cordoza—New York mafia royalty. She’s yet to connect that, well, in a very technical sense,sheowns a portion of this. And the Phenom. She has real estate in New York. And Copeland City. She has no clue her portfolio includes hotels in Biscayne Bay. Houses in Florida. A super yacht currently moored just off the coast of Florida. Cars. Bikes. Nightclubs. Transport lines. And so much more.
She doesn’t understand it because those are all assets owned by the mafia. Bought legally but with money obtained illegally. And she’s married to a cop, a man who swore his life to the law and yada yada yada.
