Page 36 of Forging Caine

Everything in the world vanished other than his hard body and the heat crashing around inside of me. My fingers drove under his shirt, the ridiculous diamond catching briefly against the hem. I’d missed him—his body, his scent, his lust for me—so much.

He stopped suddenly, pulling back and wiping at the corners of his mouth. “Then it would have worked better?”

“Huh?” I reached for his neck, wanting little more than to calm the thundering pulse between my legs.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He winked and knelt next to the table. When he stood, he displayed a roll of tape. “We can secure the ones you’re sure of to the table and work out the rest.”

I accepted the offered tape. “I was hoping for more of that kiss.”

“Bella, get your brain out of the gutter.” He pointed at the table. “We have work to do.”

With each investigation I charged headlong into, Antonio’s resistance grew weaker. It had started withThat’s not your joband had evolved intoLet me help. I placed my left hand against his chest, admiring the flash from my engagement ring. “Thanks.”

We worked together to identify the positions of five of the sheets, a wild array of alignments. None of them lay properly together. The sheet with four dots only overlapped eight dots by two inches. Whoever had created it worked hard to ensure it could be recreated easily, but only by someone who knew how.

I twisted one sheet to find the right alignment with the stack of five, while Antonio searched for a way to match the final two. Once we had them all lined up and taped to the table, we stepped back to absorb it.

At the center, a rectangle with what looked like a pastoral scene in it. A gentle hill, a few trees, and cattle. It must have been a painting. Off to the side, a shape that resembled a hand. Opposite that, wavy lines that evoked a symbol for water. Underneath the painting, the author had written ‘Stolen’ and ‘13 Fell’ beneath that.

Antonio draped an arm over my shoulder. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“The ‘Stolen’ part is pretty clear, but what does ‘13 Fell’ mean?” Maybe it was an address? But why hide it like that? And what were the water and the hand supposed to mean? And whose was it? Hell, what was the painting? “I need to mull this over.”

“Now? Or…?”

Where did I leave my phone? I needed a map. The envelope came from New York. Maybe 13 Fell was an address somewhere in New York? Fell Street? Fell Avenue? And was the painting stolenfrom13 Fell or was it being keptat13 Fell?

“I enjoy working with you, bella. It’s when you shut me out that bothers me.”

“It’s never intentional.” I sighed, staring at my phone over on the desk, too far away to sneak off to. “Just poke me or something and tell me to share.”

“Poke you?” he said, a hint of mischief in his voice. “I believe that’s what I was trying to do.”

Laughing, I shot him a coy glance from the corner of my eye. “I’m not doing anything now.”

“On the desk again?”

I spluttered another laugh and covered my face. “We broke the monitor last time we did that.”

“Sì, that was a poor choice. To the bedroom, then?”

“Only if…” I smacked his ass and twisted out of his reach, darting to the stairs. “You can catch me!”

Chapter 12

Samantha

Icollapsedfrommyhands and knees, smothering my face in the feather pillow. Thatwasbetter than lining up sheets of paper.

Antonio crashed to the bed next to me with a groan of satisfaction. “I must say, shared orgasms are infinitely better in person.”

With what little energy I had left, I rolled over to nestle my head on his chest, plucking damp strands of hair from my face.

He wrapped his powerful arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “Can you believe this is the first time we’ve made love without a ticking clock?”

“Ticking clock?”

“Well, I suppose last night was—” He yawned, releasing me to stretch one arm, then pulled me closer. “But the ticking clock? Neither of us is leaving in two weeks.”

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