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Hux took a breath. “The data on the Horn is about what we suspected. A list of names of cartel members that map to their in-game usernames. The DEA could use it to map illegal transactions to individual cartel members if they’re using the game the way we believe they are.”
Champ crossed his arms in front of his chest. “If it’s what we expected, what’s the problem?”
Hux looked at his screen and back up again before handing the phone to Champ.
“What am I looking at here?”
“One of the names is Vince’s.”
The room went silent as a tomb at the confirmation that Vince did, in fact, have ties to the cartel.
Champ’s eyes raced across the screen as he took it all in. I could sense his emotional upheaval even though his reaction was pure confident Champ.
He looked up and met everyone’s eyes in turn. “Okay. Tonight, the priority is celebrating Riggs and Carter, celebrating a job well done, celebrating my house being finished, and celebrating the fact that I managed to convince Quinn to move in with me. Tomorrow, we get back to work. Understood?”
Riggs’s mouth tipped up in a knowing smile. “Yes, boss.”
A chorus of other “yes, boss’s” echoed in the room until the rest of the team filtered out.
Champ turned to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head. “Me too. It’s like the man is a total stranger. How long has this been going on? Was he contemplating something like this even when we were together? What’s his endgame?” The corners of his lips turned up. “But you know what? Those are problems for another day. Today, I’m going to get to know your aunt and her man, ignore my mother while she acts like you’re her favorite son, and then when they’re all gone, I’m going to use your body to christen every room in this damned house.”
I stepped closer and put my arms around his neck before leaning in to bite his earlobe, and then I pulled him down the hall to the bathroom. “Why wait? Let’s start in here.”
EPILOGUE
QUINN
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER
When my phone went off, I grabbed it from the nightstand and rolled to the center of my empty bed without opening my eyes.
“H’lo?” I whispered.
Champ’s low, warm chuckle sent a shiver down my spine. “I see we’re up and at ’em, ready to greet the day, hmm, baby? I thought you were meeting my mother at eleven.”
I sighed, torn as I so often was between clapping back snarkily… and begging him to keep talking because his voice did alllll kinds of things to make my stomach wobble and my dick hard.
“S’dark,” I grumbled. “Not time t’get up yet. M’notta M’rine, y’know.”
Champ chuckled again. “No,” he agreed in a tone that held endless affection along with his amusement. “You’re not a Marine. But baby, it’s after nine o’clock your time. Are you sure the darkness isn’t just your eye mask?”
Oh. Crap. I lifted a hand and touched silk.
“That… could be,” I allowed with a sniff, and Champ’s chuckles turned to full-on laughter.
Okay, safe to say I was still not a morning person.
Many, many things had changed about my life in the months since I’d met and fallen in love with Percival Champion, but this one had not. My brain still woke up slowly, and I still preferred to lounge in bed rather than jump up to greet the day.
The only difference was that these days I preferred to do my lounging with someone.
A very specific someone.
Sadly for me, that someone was currently finishing up the fifth and final day of an op that had taken him out of the Thicket to a super-secret location he could only disclose to his most trusted associates—it was Las Vegas. He’d told me immediately—and wouldn’t be back until tonight.
“For your information,” I said with as much dignity as a naked man alone in bed wearing a sleep mask could muster, “I was rudely awakened, and I’ve been extra tired this week.”
Five days was the longest we’d been apart since… well, since the night we’d met. Even back when we’d been counting our nights together, we hadn’t managed to stay away from each other for that long. It was genuinely hard to get to sleep without him now.
If I were going to get all sappy and sentimental—which happened more and more often these days—I might reflect on how cool it was that now we spent our time counting down the minutes we had to be apart instead of worrying about how many evenings we’d spent together. But also, as a realist, the unavoidable travel that came along with our otherwise-fulfilling jobs kinda sucked.
“Poor baby. You must miss your boyfriend a lot,” Champ said softly.
I rolled my eyes beneath my mask. Of course I fucking did. Like, a lot. But I hadn’t yet descended to the stage of sappiness where I was willing to accept pity, damn it.
