Free Romani Armada by Tracy Cooper-Posey

her jaw, leaving tingling, burning flesh in its wake. Then he lifted a brow in enquiry, waiting for her answer. The amusement was back in his eyes and Deonne suddenly knew that the afternoon was going to be filled with these microscopic landmines. He was going to take his revenge in tiny sips – a hidden caress here, a delicate stroke there, all designed to zap her nerves and steal her self-control as only he knew how.
    The bastard.
     

Chapter Six
    Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.: Ryan glanced at Nayara as she shut the heavy timber door, hiding Deonne and Justin from his view. It didn’t matter—Justin’s caress of the woman’s face had been more than revealing and Deonne’s body language had spoken of high sexual tension.
    Nayara gave Ryan as small smile as he resettled his balance against the cane. He refused to think about how much he had been using it today. “Is that why you insisted Justin be here today?”
    “In part,” Nayara replied, picking up her box of boards.
    “How long have they…?”
    “A while.” She fell in beside him as they started down the long corridor toward the branch’s administration offices.
    “Is it serious?”
    Nayara just smiled.
    “It’s Justin,” he complained. “I thought I was beginning to know him. But Deonne Rinaldi is the last person I would have associated with him.”
    “Then I guess you don’t know him as well as you thought you did,” Nayara replied placidly.
    He thought that one over for a while. “Does anyone know him better than you or me? He was one of the first the agency signed up. If we don’t know him, who does?”
    “I imagine Deonne does,” Nayara told him. “At least better than we do.” She let her shoulder bump against him. “Think you can get a teeny bit more speed out of that stick there, hop-along? I have a media event in need of a location and not a lot of time in which to find it.”
    “You have no sympathy for the disabled,” he muttered.
    “True. I steal crippled people’s auto-walkers and every time I see a deaf person, I’m overcome with the urge to yank their artificial ears out, run away and smelt them down for the silver and diamonds and if you don’t hurry up I’m going to kick your cane out from under you and steal that, too.”
    He straightened up and held it out to her. “Here you go.”
    “My hands are full.” She shrugged, the box lifting with the movement. “Sorry.”
    Ryan dropped the cane back to the floor with not a little relief. The few steps he’d taken without it had been precarious and he was aware that Nayara had observed each drunken, weaving step, too.
    The silence that fell was thick, writhing with everything she wouldn’t say.
    “Just this one emergency,” he promised her. “Then I will concentrate on figuring out what the hell is wrong with me and find out how to fix it. But we have to get through this.”
    The silence stretched another few steps.
    “Cáel would kill you if he saw you pushing yourself this way,” she said. “We don’t even know what is really wrong with you—”
    “You think Cáel hasn’t gone right back to three hours of sleep a night, ouzo and eating once every two days?” Ryan asked her, trying to keep his tone free of anger. The anger was a product of the fear her questions were building in him and he didn’t like that he was responding to it with this shitty macho reaction.
    What was wrong with him? His reactions were all screwed up and unpredictable.
    Nayara pressed her lips together tightly, riding herd on her own inappropriate reactions. Damn, when had they both got so good at controlling themselves this way? In Constantinople, they would have screamed and fought and resolved their differences in bed.
    “How would I know what Cáel is doing?” Nayara asked. Her voice was neutral but her posture was stiff with hurt and upset. She missed him, of course. Much more than Ryan, because he had only just started to notice Cáel’s absence, now he was awake