She was already halfway down the path, speed walking as if she was competing for gold. Or maybe she just wanted to beat him to the front desk. Didn’t matter. She could win all the minor skirmishes she wanted, but he’d won their war. She was here. He fell in beside her.
“You’re a bad penny,” she announced, not taking her gaze off the path in front of her. It was getting close to sunset, and the sunlight was filtering through the palm trees. Monkeys chattered away overhead, and the birds yelled back. Kind of like him and Dixon really. Plenty of noise but no real conversation.
He shot her a grin. “I do keep turning up, don’t I?”
“What?” She gave him a hard look and he figured she was seconds away from elbowing him.
“Just thinking aloud,” he said, because that was the truth. “So you think they got the bloodstains out of the gravel yet?”
They both looked at the road where they’d taken down Marcos. Everything seemed normal.
Ashley didn’t stop her mad dash for freedom. “You’d better hope they don’t remember your pretty face or connect it with the disappearance of the Marcos bridal party.”
He honestly didn’t expect it to be an issue. The staff had been rotated out since their last covert visit and people tended to see what they wanted to see anyhow.
When they made it to reception, naturally Ashley wasn’t done fighting him. Since he’d booked the reservation, he ponied up his credit card—and she promptly whipped out hers. While they argued over who got the privilege of paying the bill, the stuffy guy at the front desk shoved wet towels and champagne drinks with ridiculous red cherries in their direction, as if cotton and alcohol could fix their relationship problems.
Not a chance in hell.
And honestly? It kind of bothered him that Ashley wouldn’t let him take care of her. Fantasy Island’s room rates were sky-high, and he didn’t know if she had that kind of cash. He’d planned on blackmailing her—not bleeding her dry.
“You embarrassed the check-in guy,” he pointed out when they were finally being whisked away to their villa in a golf cart. Stuffy Guy had eventually stepped in and solved the argument by taking both their credit cards.
She gave him the look he’d decided to christen Code Yellow. If it worked for Homeland Security, it worked for him. She wasn’t ready to shove him out of the moving vehicle (Code Orange) or shoot him with his own weapon (Code Red), but neither was she volunteering to strip naked and fulfill all his sexual fantasies (Code Green). “We’re going to have one of those modern marriages, where everybody pulls his or her own weight. Got it?”
Somehow, he didn’t think that was really a question. “I made you come down here. I pay.”
“It’s not that simple, Brandon.”
“Maybe you should call me Mr. Brandon. We could take the nineteenth century approach to our marital union.” He kind of liked the sound of that but she huffed in response and drilled holes into the back of their driver’s head.
“Actually, I’m gonna call you Blackmailing Bastard,” she announced. The driver clearly didn’t care for their hostilities, because the golf cart hurtled along the path as though it was shooting for liftoff. Guess the guy wanted to dump them ASAP and Levi could hardly blame him.
When they reached the villa, Ashley bounded ahead while Levi grabbed the bags and discreetly tipped their driver. He had no idea how come his charming bride hadn’t cut that sexist gesture off at the pass, but he’d take it. As soon as he stepped inside, he spotted the enormous gift basket parked in the middle of a rose-covered bed. A single, really large bed.
Damn it. He hadn’t had the best of connections when he’d called the resort to book a last-minute room. Apparently, the words married and recently had gotten mistranslated along the way into I want hot sex in the honeymoon suite.
Ordinarily, he’d have been fine with the misunderstanding—he had no problem with a little opportunistic sex—but this was Dixon. Having actual intercourse with her was as likely as peace in the Middle East or the zombie apocalypse. They’d have to compromise, however, and hopefully she wasn’t a bed hog, because given what this place was costing him, he was not sleeping on the daybed, the floor or anyplace else that didn’t offer a million-dollar mattress.
“Someone thinks we’re on our honeymoon.” She poked the basket and he had no idea how to interpret the strange look on her face. Ashley being Ashley, though, he figured she’d tell him exactly what she was thinking and then follow it up with multistep directions on how to do exactly what she wanted.
“Technically not wrong,” he pointed out. “What did we score?”
She smiled. Slowly. Yeah, he might be newly married but he already knew he was in trouble here—and that was before she started pulling stuff out of the gift basket as if she was unloading cans of Campbell’s from a grocery bag.
“We’ve got edible panties. Edible boxers.” She arched an eyebrow. “Which probably offers more calories than your average woman consumes in a day, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not feeling hungry.”
She might not be, but he suddenly was. He dropped down onto the bed, shoving rose petals out of the way. “Are you playing show and tell?”
“You first.” She snorted. “Some of this stuff should come with directions or an operating manual.”
“Novice.” He flicked her knee with his fingers.
“Because you’re an expert with—” she squinted “—chocolate body butter?”
Not yet, but he could be. Licking the stuff off Ashley’s body suddenly didn’t seem half bad.
“We also have a pair of his and hers nipple clamps.” She waved something around that looked like a medieval torture device in miniature. Or an eyelash curler. Apparently he hadn’t seen everything in his bachelor days. “You could be a gentleman and volunteer to go first.”
“Not a chance in hell.” Not that he didn’t like the mental image of him touching her nipples, but pain wasn’t his thing. “Your boobs are too pretty to mark up.”
She made a face he’d seen a dozen times in the field. He razzed her and she gave it right back. “Flatterer. You just like me for my boobs.”
“And I’d like to keep mine in one piece,” he said, grimacing slightly. Contrary to what she seemed to believe, he actually did have limits. Plus he truly did like more about her than her lovely anatomy. She was a damned good agent. He respected the way she single-mindedly went after her targets and showed no mercy. She knew her way around a gun. And she didn’t hesitate to get dirty. Really dirty. There were four good reasons right there to like Ashley.
“And here we have our pièce de résistance—” She pulled an enormous purple dildo out of the bottom of the basket. “Apparently the resort staff isn’t sure there’s enough of you to keep me happy and have thoughtfully provided us with Purple Monster. Catch.”
Karma was a bitch. Levi caught the dildo automatically, then looked at what he had in his hand. Yep. Twelve inches of battery-operated love machine. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Examined the toy again. It definitely merited a second glance
