“You proud of yourself?” I muse, still kissing at the edge of his jaw.
“Yes.”
I lean in, mouth near his ear. “Careful.”
Oisín’s breath catches, but his eyes don’t lower. “I’m not the one who stopped working.”
I kiss him again. This time he lets me lead for a little while, opening when I press closer, fingers sliding into the back of my cut. When my hand drops lower and my grip turns possessive in the old, easy way I’m used to, he catches my wrist. He holds me there, the line he’s set very clear.
I should be irritated, and I am, but irritation doesn’t stop the heat from moving through me. Oisín slides off the desk, staying close enough that his chest brushes mine when he straightens.
“Read the folder,” he says.
“You came in here to make sure I read a folder?”
“I came in here because you were about to turn the broker report into a murder plan. The folder should happen first.” He bends to pick up the fallen pages and puts them back on the desk with a neatness that feels like mockery. “Moth said twenty minutes. I gave him ten.”
Oisín throws me a small smile before disappearing out into the hallway, my whole body on alert with no outlet. That wasn’t the same man I first brought back here or met at the club. He’sbecome… I’m not even sure and I can’t tell whether I crave more of it or want to put Oisín on his knees immediately.
Bricks enters five minutes later with Moth behind him, and I know by the look on his face that he’s already decided to enjoy whatever he thinks happened in my office. Moth closes the door, bends to retrieve a sheet near the chair, and sets it on the desk without comment, which is worse than if he’d said something immediately.
“Oisín said you were reading the updated pressure map,” Moth says.
“Oisín came in here and assaulted my workflow.”
Bricks looks at the papers scattered across the desk, then at my face, and his grin spreads. “Is that what the kids are calling it?”
I give him a look that should make a smarter man reconsider. Bricks only laughs because he’s survived too many bad decisions to respect a good one.
Moth glances at the desk. “Your workflow appears flushed.”
“Keep talking, Moth.”
“I’m merely observing that your broker report is upside down.”
I look down and find the report turned the wrong way. Bricks laughs hard enough to brace one hand on the doorframe, while Moth watches with the faint, clinical satisfaction of a man who has discovered a pattern he intends to document.
I turn the report around. “I have actual problems to solve.”
“One of them just walked out of here with your tongue in his mouth and your brain in his pocket,” Bricks says.
Moth adjusts the recovered page. “That is not where the brain is stored.”
“Metaphor, Moth.”
“It was anatomically imprecise.”
“It was funny.”
“It was crude.”
“It can be both.”
I lean back in my chair and stare at them until Bricks drops into the chair opposite the desk like he owns the place. Moth sits beside him because apparently my office has become a clubhouse confessional for emotionally constipated men with guns.
“Why are either of you here?” I ask.
“The Reaper angle is confirmed enough to justify containment, but not retaliation,” Moth says, folding his hands around the tablet in his lap. “Oisín’s map suggests holding the visible routes steady while shifting internal response windows. I agree with him.”
