When he was gone, Delilah felt...cold.
She pressed her hand to the door.
When they met that morning, she’d almost reached out to shake his hand, but then she stopped herself.
She’d grown accustomed to keeping a physical barrier between herself and others who knew what she did for a living. People tried to be professional, but the moment they shook hands with her, she could see the disgust cross their faces. She could only tell herself so many times that the revulsion was for where her hands had recently been, not for who she was personally.
But why was it bothering her now? She didn’t care if someone didn’t want to touch her when they were disgusted with what she did. She liked being helpful to the authorities and families and being a voice for someone who had their voice taken away from them.
Why did Agent Reyes seem more important than the others? Usually, she didn’t care if she had the approval of others.
Delilah stepped away from the door, trying to get her mind to return to the job. She had photos to pore over, specimens she wouldn’t get to autopsy because the families had already cremated them.
Sitting on the bed, Delilah clenched and unclenched her right hand to a fist, feeling the phantom touch of Agent Reyes.
She should have at least tried. Was she regretting this now because she wanted to bang him? Or because it made her look uncertain and small to not have taken the initiative?
Or maybe she just wanted to touch him once, and she’d lost the opportunity?
As though there was something more important to getting off that came with that simple handshake?
Delilah shook her head.
This was a stupid thing to be thinking about. Just because she wanted to get him out of his clothes and in her spare bed for a few minutes didn’t mean he was down with the idea.
She had the photos of the case in front of her, and the tragic images were enough to force her to get her mind back on her priorities, and taking care of these dead souls was, at the moment, more important than getting laid.
So Delilah got to work.
5
So far, the night was uneventful.
Aiden paid for the food, giving the delivery boy a very close once-over that made him shrink just a bit, then took dinner over to Delilah’s.
Hearing all the locks coming undone after he gave the three-knock signal pleased him. It proved she was keeping to her promise of staying safe and secure as she went over her books on the dead.
She invited him in to eat with her, but they had little conversation to go with it. She seemed to have forgotten that she said she was tired and had become reenergized while looking over the files and cross-referencing her books.
He refrained from trying to get her attention as she worked.
And fuck him was that ever torture. He wanted nothing more than to pull her close, tear her clothes off, and hear his mate moan his name.
His mate. He’d met his mate today, and she was a coroner brought in for the same case he was working on. The FPU agent he was tasked with guarding.
What were the odds of that?
Luckily, it seemed like he was doing a good job of hiding how afraid he was of physical contact with her. At least, if she guessed at him having an aversion to her, she probably thought it had something to do with the fact that she played around in dead bodies for a living.
The smallest touch between them would ignite his passion. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself, in a time when he needed to keep his wits about him.
It was simple enough to keep his dick in check by looking at the photos on her bed. That definitely made it easier for him to keep some amount of self-control.
That night, back in his room, he went over his own files, forcing himself not to think about Delilah. He occasionally did a walk-around, looking for anyone out of place or potential spies around the hotel. He’d knock three times on her door and listen for her reply from the other side that assured him she was perfectly fine.
Between those bouts, Aiden read his own notes.
A bunyip shifter was a new concept. It had been killed by agents Mike Stone and Chase Belair, who had also been on the case while a kraken shifter, Olivia Grey, volunteered as bait to draw the killer out.
He still couldn’t believe it. A civilian volunteer. In a dangerous undercover operation.
They’d put her to work, swimming around trying to draw the killer out. And they’d succeeded…
Until the bodies started showing up again.
There was another bunyip out there based on the way the last team had been targeted, even losing one of their own, an ATTF tech agent named Carol.
Looking at the photos of the ugly fucker, the long snout, claws, fur, and scales, he almost wished they’d been right about it being a kraken.
A squid with teeth seemed much more preferable to...whatever the fuck this was.
The next morning, after a fitful sleep and a quick shower, Aiden was banging on Delilah’s door.
He expected her to answer as fresh and clean as she had been the day before. The picture of perfection and readiness.
“Uh…” Seeing her eyes puffed up, nearly shut from sleep, had him falling back a step.
“It’s six in the morning. This had better be good.” She leaned her head against the doorframe, adding to his shock.
“We’d planned on getting an early start on the day. Your file says you’re normally up by six.”
Delilah rubbed at her eyes. She must have fallen asleep reading those files in bed because, per what his sisters told him, no women with any sense was ever supposed to sleep with their eyeliner still on.
“That’s when I’m not jet-lagged or sleeping ten minutes away from the office with zero traffic. Fuck me, I could be knocked out for another hour.”
He was pretty sure she didn’t realize she’d just said the words fuck and me in front of him.
Suddenly, she stopped rubbing her eyes, pushing her long, messy dark hair out of her face and behind her head, and glared at him. “What exactly do you mean, my file? You have a file on me?”
“Of course we do.”
She eyed him, dark eyes suspicious and penetrating. “You look chipper this morning. I would’ve thought you would be the sort of guy to be sleeping in.”
He grinned, enjoying rubbing it in. “I know. I do well at pulling off the slacking surfer dude who hangs out at the bar or the beach all the time, don’t I?”
She didn’t say anything to that, but he felt certain she was barely holding it back. That was fine. She looked extra pretty, somehow, when he shocked her.
He liked that he could stun her so much. She had an air about her, like nothing ever bothered her, and Aiden had worried he wouldn’t be able to pierce this armor shield she had going on.
“I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t trying to say—”
“I know, I know. Don’t worry about it.“ Aiden waved his hand to dismiss her worries. He enjoyed the fact that she had become so flustered over the idea that she might have insulted him when, just the day before, he had the impression that she was a real ball-breaker. That she was the type of person who didn’t care if she insulted him or hurt his feelings.
Delilah still seemed unsure of herself. “All the same, I am sorry. I was out of sorts yesterday. I didn’t sleep well on the flight over, and I was also a bit out of sorts being in a new place looking at a new case.”