Page 26 of Fake Marriage Mafia Triplets

Vogt’s hand comes down over hers before she’s fully released it, his fingers closing on her wrist to turn the case toward the light.

He touches her for one second.

I move before I decide to. I step in and spread my hand against the small of Piper’s back, and I angle my body between her and Vogt in a way no associate would, looking at the place where his fingers rest on her wrist until he takes them off it. The temperature of the whole exchange drops. Vogt’s smile doesn’t move, but his eyes do, flicking from her wrist to my hand on her back to my face, noting I’ve just revealed more than I should have. With luck, he assumes I’m the widow’s possessive new lover and nothing more.

“The case stays with Mrs. Rusakov until terms are agreed,” I say. “You’ll deal through her, not around her.”

“Of course.” Vogt withdraws with a small bow that has an edge under it. “Forgive me. I meant no discourtesy to the lady, or to whoever she travels with.” He sets a card on the table beside the case. “My client is patient, Mrs. Rusakov. When you tire of intermediaries who forget their place, call the number.”

He’s gone into the crowd before I can decide whether to follow. Across the room, Platon has stiffened, watching me with faint alarm. He saw all of it. I put my hand on a woman I’m not supposed to own in front of the exact person we needed to fool, and I did it without a second’s thought.

Platon doesn’t come over. He doesn’t have to. He warned me about this, and he won’t waste a look reminding me he was right. He’ll find a way to mention it later, and I’ll deserve it.

Piper picks up the case, pockets Vogt’s card, and walks toward the back of the club without a word to me. Which is how I know how badly I’ve done.

The locked office behind the club belongs to a contact who owes Platon a favor and knows better than to ask why we need a room. Piper is inside it when I close the door, standing with her back to me, gripping the edge of the desk.

“You want to tell me what that was?” She sounds pissed.

“He had his hand on you.”

“He had his hand on my wrist for one second, in a room where I was following the plan.” When she turns around, the widow is gone, and the woman underneath is furious in a way the widow never gets to be. “You stepped in like a jealous husband, which is a problem, Nikita, because you’re supposed to be dead. Dead men don’t glare at brokers who touch their wives. You handed Vogt the one thing we came here to hide, that somebody in this room cares whether I get touched, and now he’s going to spend the drive back to wherever he sleeps wondering who.”

“He’s more likely to assume I’m your lover than your husband, back from the dead.” I don’t let her express her clear doubt. “I know what I did.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I couldn’t watch it.” The words come out before I can stop them. “I’ve spent five nights telling myself this arrangement is smart, and you’re just an asset I’m protecting. Then that man closed his hand on you, and every lie I told myself went out the window at once. I know it was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake while I was doing it. I did it anyway.”

She stares at me. The fury doesn’t leave her face, but the desire underneath it is the same as mine, and I recognize it because it’s wrecking her composure the exact way it’s wrecking mine.

“You don’t get to do that,” she says, quieter. “You don’t get to almost blow four years of hiding because another man touched my wrist. You don’t get to act like no one’s allowed to put a hand on what belongs to you when nothing here belongs to you. I’m not yours. I’m playing yours. There’s a difference, and you nearly got us both killed forgetting it.”

“I haven’t forgotten it. That’s the problem.” I take a step toward her, but she doesn’t move back, which is the only permission I’m going to get and more than I deserve. “You want me to say it wasn’t about wanting you. I can’t. I wanted to break his hand because it was on you. That’s jealousy, and it overrode the plan before I could stop it, but I would do it again. That is the most dangerous thing I’ve admitted to anyone in four years, and I’m saying it out loud because pretending I didn’t feel it is what almost got us killed.”

The room is very quiet. Past the door, the club goes on without us, glasses clinking, low voices, and money changing hands.

“You should leave,” I tell her, because it’s the last honest thing I can offer her. “The car’s downstairs. Platon will take you back to the house and I’ll finish this alone. If you walk out that door right now, we go back to the arrangement, and I’ll never say another word about it. That’s yours to choose.”

She looks at the door then me before she crosses the room and takes a fistful of my shirt. She doesn’t leave.

I kiss her first. I’ve wanted to since she walked half a step ahead of me into a room that believes she was my wife, and the wanting has been building under every careful inch of distance I’ve kept all night. When I kiss her, it isn’t gentle. She kisses me back with the same fury she was aiming at me a minute ago, teeth and heat, her hands twisting in my shirt to drag me closer, and the fight we were having turns into this without either of us deciding to let it.

“This is a mistake,” she says against my mouth, making the word sound like a dare.

“Then stop.”

“No.”

I get my hands into her hair and kiss her harder. She bites my lip and pulls me by the shirt until the backs of her thighs hit the desk. I lift her onto it, shove the desk lamp and a stack of papers out of the way, and step between her knees. She’s already working my belt open while I drag the hem of her dress up her thighs, both of us rough with it, past pretending this is anything but what it is.

“Someone could walk in,” she says, and it comes out breathlessly instead of cautiously.

“Platon moved to the corridor when we came back here. No one opens this door but him.” I get her underwear off and drop it, push her knees wider, and look at her, flushed and furious, but wet and entirely done arguing. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Hell, no. Fuck me.” She hooks a heel behind my thigh and pulls. “Stop asking and touch me.”

I slide two fingers into her while I work her clit with my thumb, and she’s so slick and ready that her pussy clenches around my hand almost at once, a sound coming out of her that goes straight to my cock. She’s louder than the first time I gave her an orgasm days ago, past managing herself, and every noise burns off another layer of the control I’ve worn all night.