Page 64 of An Espresso Machine’s Guide to Love & Mischief

I gape at her, not sure what to think of her farfetched explanation.

“I’m Diva,” she adds. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

“Asgard,” I tell her, though I haven’t a clue why.

She smiles. “Nice name. I think it suits you.”

My heart does a summersault. Fuck.

She purses her lips, and I watch them move as she asks, “Hey, why were you at the top of that office building earlier?”

I can’t tell her the actual reason—that I was hired to assassinate the heir to the Del Ray fortune. Covert missions are covert for a reason.

Whatever the case, I can’t tell her the truth, so I lie. “I was there to rescue my mate, the espresso machine.”

“You’re still a terrible liar,” she says, and it makes my heart flutter. “But you did find me. Finally!”

“I…” I don’t know what to say. Thankfully, I don’t have to say anything, because a crash sounds from somewhere nearby. Fuck. How could I have forgotten about the danger I’m in here? This place is crawling with chair-smashing water taxi drivers, knife-throwing grannies, and poison-dart throwers.

“We have to get out of here,” Diva cries. “If Trevor finds me, he’s going to unplug me for good.”

I don’t know who the fuck Trevor is, but I figure he’s one of the assholes. Maybe Water Taxi Driver—though I bashed his head in, and he’ll be lucky if he ever wakes up from it.

“Please,” she whimpers beneath me—and not in a hot way.

My heart constricts. Fuck.

My gut says she’s telling the truth, and I always trust my gut. Usually. The one time I didn’t, I ended up caged, raccoon style. After she shot me with a dart. Or her body did. Whole thing sounds messed up, if you ask me.

But my gut has never led me astray before, and I need to trust it now.

I climb off her and offer her my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

She takes it, and my skin goosebumps. As I pull her up, she stumbles a little and steadies herself on the counter. “This way.”

She staggers into the dining room, and I follow. She rushes to a cart holding my espresso machine—the one that, if she’s to be believed, used to house her.

My heart leaps into my throat. I read her wrong. She’s about to do something to hurt my real mate.

I leap toward her and grab her arm before she can hurt my espresso machine.

She gapes at me. “What are you doing? We need to take the espresso machine with us.” She yanks her arm free from my grasp and starts pushing the cart toward the door. “We can’t leave without it!”

That had been my plan originally, so I nod. I place my fingers on the machine’s side and feel… nothing. No spark like I should feel when touching my mate.

I move my hand to Diva’s arm instead, and my stomach flutters, my heart races, and my cock twitches.

She is my mate. Somehow, she moved from the machine to the body of this dart-shooting bastard.

“Hey, who’s there?” a man shouts.

I whirl around just as a tall, skinny man steps into the dining room from another room in the yacht club.

Chapter 30

Diva

“Shit. We have to go,” Asgard shouts. “Just leave the espresso machine and run.”