“I don’t want to keep her,” the assassin said dismissively, without looking away from Drea’s face. “I just want to fuck her. One time.”

Reassured by Rafael’s immediate rejection of the request, confident once more, Drea laughed. She had a sweet laugh, as harmonious as the chiming of bells. Rafael had once told her she reminded him of an angel, with her long, curly blond hair, big blue eyes, and her bell-like laugh. She used the laugh as deliberately as if it were a weapon, reminding Rafael without words that she was indeed his angel, his good luck.

At the sound, the assassin’s entire body seemed to tense, his attention so tightly focused on her she could almost feel the touch of it on her skin. Until then, if she’d thought about it much, Drea would have said he was already alert, but now he was somehow more so, as if all his senses were heightened, his focus so intensified she felt the burn of it on her skin and her laughter choked off as abruptly as if his hand had closed around her throat.

“I don’t share,” Rafael said, an irritated note underlying the ease of his tone. The top man never shared his woman; if he did, then he lost an edge, an important one, in the authority he had over his men. Surely the assassin knew that. But they were alone in the penthouse apartment, with no witnesses to what Rafael did or didn’t do, so maybe that was why he’d thought he could have what he wanted.

Again the assassin said nothing, merely watching, and though he didn’t move there was abruptly something lethal stewing in the atmosphere between them. Curled against him as she was, Drea felt Rafael’s almost imperceptible twitch, as if he, too, was aware of the change.

“Come now,” Rafael said, his tone cajoling, but Drea knew him well; she caught the uneasiness he was trying so hard to disguise, and because that wasn’t something she was accustomed to seeing in him she almost darted an alarmed glance at him, before catching herself and instead inspecting a fingernail as if she’d spotted a chip in the polish. “That’s a lot of money to throw away for something so brief. Sex is cheap; you can buy a lot of it with a hundred thousand dollars.”