His voice was breathy as he said, “Thank you.”

It took me two tries to say, “Oh, Domino.”

He raised his head enough to look at me.

I smiled and said in a voice that was almost too breathless to work, “Domino, it was my pleasure. Oh God, it was so my pleasure.”

He smiled then and started to pull himself out of me, one hand going to the condom to make sure everything stayed in place. He half collapsed beside me. “I need to clean up.”

I patted his chest sort of awkwardly, because it was a bad angle for it. “You do that. I can’t move yet.”

He got to his feet beside the bed and then staggered into the wall, trying to get into the bathroom. It made me laugh, and he laughed with me. Sex so good you run into walls.

75

I WAS STILL lying on the bed, letting my mind and newly healed body drift, when there was a forceful knock on the door. It was the sort of knock that police give, very authoritative and loud. The adrenaline rush cleared the floating happiness of afterglow. I sat up and called out, “Domino?”

There was a knock at the connecting door, and Ethan said, “Coming through,” and opened the door without asking. He had a gun bare in his hand, and I was okay with that. I was scrambling across the bed for the one I’d left handy on the bedside table. Once I had it in one hand and the sheets covering my chest in the other one, I felt a little better. I always needed clothes and weapons to feel really secure.

Domino came out of the bathroom, still nude, but he had a gun in his hand, which meant he’d stashed one in there somewhere and I hadn’t known it. I was sort of impressed, or sad with myself. “I heard,” he said.

“Who is it?” Ethan asked from the open connecting door.

Domino shook his head and went toward the door. Most people would have put their eye to the peephole, but he didn’t. He stood to one side and about a foot from the door, as the knock sounded again, and a man’s voice said, “Hotel security!” The voice had that cop sound to it. I was betting he either had been a cop or was one earning extra money on the side.

“I’m sorry. Who did you say you are?” Domino asked, though I knew he’d heard perfectly.

“Hotel security. Is everything all right in there, sir?”

“We’re fine.”

“Could you open the door and let us verify that everyone in the room is fine?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable with opening the door,” Domino said.

“Sir, if you don’t open the door, we will be forced to unlock the door and enter without your permission.”

“The safety bolt is on. You won’t get in,” Domino said.

“We are just following up on a noise complaint, sir,” a second, slightly less authoritative voice said.

Domino turned and looked at me, smiling in that way that men do when they’re proud of the noise you’ve made together. “If you had a noise complaint, I’m sorry. We’ll be quieter.”

“People said they heard a woman screaming. I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we need to verify that the woman is not in any distress.”

Domino smiled broader and shook his head. “Anita, can you tell them you’re not in distress?”

I held the sheet a little tighter to my chest as if I needed more cover-up just to talk through the door. “I’m sorry we were loud, but I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry, miss. We’d love to be able to take your word through the door, but we need to actually see you face-to-face,” the second male voice said; he sounded younger than the other one.

“Is there a law in Ireland against loud sex?” Domino asked.

“No, sir,” said the voice through the door, “but there is a law against domestic abuse. If you don’t open the door and let us see the lady for ourselves, we will be forced to call the Gardai and report this as a potential assault.”

“I didn’t think we were that loud,” I said.

Ethan said, “You were loud.”

“If you didn’t know what we were doing, would you think I was screaming for help?”

“Maybe.”

“Just a minute. We need to get some clothes on before we open the door,” Domino said, and backed away from the door. I’d have liked to say he was being paranoid, but the knock had spooked me, too. Maybe we were all just professionally paranoid.

“Thank you, sir, ma’am, miss.” It was the younger security guard again; he sounded uncomfortable even through the door.

It wasn’t just clothes we needed. The guns and blades that we’d been wearing were in a pile on either side of the bed. We had no official status in Ireland, so without one of the Gardai that knew us, or Nolan and his people with us, if we opened the door and the security people saw this many weapons, they would call the cops. We could put some of the dangerous stuff under the edge of the bed, but I didn’t want to shove them too far under, because then you couldn’t reach them, or worse yet I didn’t want to spend time searching for a gun that I’d forgotten was under the bed. I’d never done it yet, but I didn’t want to break my streak.

“Sir, ma’am?” said the cop voice at the door.

“Just tidying up,” I called out, trying to sound like a woman who had rented a hotel room with her lover and was maybe hiding bondage gear or sex toys from sight, not weapons. Nope, no weapons here.

Ethan holstered the gun he’d drawn so he could help us put weapons in the closet. Domino pulled on underwear and jeans. He picked up his holster, but Ethan shook his head.