He didn’t want to come back to full consciousness. He would have to start picking apart exactly how unwise this had been, from the dinner he’d been urged to cancel to...this.
He shouldn’t be feeling this smug when she had so completely destroyed him, leaving him more sated than any sexual experience he’d ever had.
Still, her odd choice of words penetrated his haze.
“Mission?” His voice had to be dug out of the depths of his chest and barely arrived above a graveled whisper. He turned his head on the pillow.
A decadent smile touched her lips. “I don’t want to leave this bed.”
He didn’t want her to leave it, either. Ever. Realizing that was one of those moments when his life went out of focus and came back with finer edges and starker contrasts. It was sobering because he couldn’t pretend things hadn’t changed. He had.
“Not even to eat? I’m starving.” He kept his tone light so he wouldn’t betray how deeply affected he was. “I’ll make a call, order in. Stay here.” He had to make more than one call, but food was a good excuse to gain some distance and perspective. He sat up on the edge of the bed.
“I might shower if you don’t mind?”
He looked over his shoulder. “Run a bath. I’ll join you.”
“Do you remember where my bag went?”
“Bidduzza, I’m having trouble remembering my own name.”
She chuckled throatily and rose to hug him from behind. The cool swells of her breasts were against his back and her bent knees bracketed his hips. Her arms slithered around his neck and she gave his earlobe a light nip.
“Ouch.” He protectively pinched it. Definitely a bath and a tutorial on his most sensitive erogenous zones. Sucking? Great. Biting? Not so much.
Which implied they would be doing this again.
Since when did he have such weak self-discipline?
“Sorry.” Her soft breath wafted against his nape while her hair fell across his naked shoulder in a sensuous tickle. “I’m trying to thank you. That was wondrous.”
“It was.” Recognizing that, admitting it, increased his growing caution. He was very good at compartmentalizing, but needed to catch up on the filing. “I’ll find your bag.”
“I can.” She rose and picked up his shirt, shook it out and pushed her arms into the sleeves. “Do you mind?” she asked with a glance as she did.
How could he? Not only was she a splendid picture of debauchery, rosy curves and shadowed nipples visible beneath the fine linen, he experienced a Neanderthal-like thrill at seeing her in a garment that belonged to him. Not that he was such a throwback as to see her as a belonging, but he was aware of something inside him locking into place. The kind of possessiveness that came of discovering something priceless and resolving to shelter it close. Protect and cherish.
Damn, that was unsettling. He had sexual affairs, but always kept them as simple and casual as possible, yet here he felt the tug to follow when she moved out of sight into the bathroom. The water started running.
He pulled on his briefs and settled in his chair, picked up his pants, but his phone wasn’t in them. On the table by the front door, perhaps.
“What do you feel like?” he asked when he found his phone and she joined him in the lounge. “There’s a Thai place that’s quite good.” He thumbed through his contacts. “The vegan place is better, but it takes longer.”
“You’re vegan?”
“I have teams of people dedicated to my physical health. I eat what they make me. I should check the refrigerator. There’s probably something there.”
“Whatever you want is fine.” She picked up her bag from the table and started to dig through it. “But I need lip balm before I eat. My lips feel like they’re starting to chap. How do you think that happened?” She tucked her chin and elevated her brows in a scold.
“I have no idea. Let me kiss it better,” he offered.
“Nice try. Not until—” She frowned. “Someone has been through my bag.”
A guarded shiver chased over him, making him wish he’d put on more clothes. This was what came of letting sex make him complacent.
“Is something missing?” he asked with a suitable level of concern, even though he was damned confident nothing would be. “I can’t imagine anyone at the restaurant went into it, but I can make a call.”
She set the bag back on the table while she took a thorough inventory. “Everything seems to be here.” She counted some bills, rearranged the order of them before she folded them back into a pocket.
“How do you know someone’s been through it?” Only spies like him tended to set up little traps to betray those who might enter where they weren’t invited.
“I’ve lived out of a suitcase most of my life. I arrange all my bags so I can get what I want without looking and can always tell when a maid or customs agent has rummaged through. I never put my lip balm in that pocket.” She tsked. “Maybe tell the restaurant to be on the lookout for pickpockets?”
“I’ll call them after I order the food. Join you in a minute,” he promised.
She disappeared and he tapped to call Everett.
“You left early,” was Everett’s abrupt greeting. Perhaps that was the reason his minion had been so sloppy in the search of Freja’s bag.
“Anything?” Giovanni asked.
“Two passports. American and Swedish.”
That fact had been in the dossier Everett had provided on Giovanni’s request, the one that had included her extensive debriefing after her two-year stint in a North Korean village, the names of her contacts at university, and the particulars of her book deal. The general consensus among government agencies was that she could be a foreign operative, but no one had been able to prove it or determine who employed her.
“That’s it?” Giovanni prompted.
“She was prepared to spend the night with you.” Everett’s tone held a warning.
Giovanni dismissed her changes of clothes with a meaningless grunt. Freja had been coming from work. Plenty of women were veritable tortoises, carrying their entire boudoir everywhere they went.
“I have a car waiting to take her home,” Everett said.
“Unnecessary.” Giovanni didn’t even pause to think about it.
A potent silence on the other end told him he ought to.
“Do you mind if I have dessert?” Freja asked, jolting him with her sudden reappearance. “I have a hideous sweet tooth. Chocolate?”
“Done,” he assured her, saying to Everett, “Did you get that? Add dessert to my order. Something with chocolate. Leave it with the doorman.”