They were back in 'blend in' mode but had managed to find an empty booth to keep up their pretense in. Red stretched an arm across the back of the booth and she slotted into his side with little in the way of discomfort.
He looked at her suddenly.
"I'm sorry," he said and she looked at him quizzically, "That can't have been easy to listen to, in truth it was hard to even say. But I knew that, given who I am, I had to go with a proposal or we'd be dead in the alley right now."
She was nodding her head.
"It came as a bit of a shock but...I caught on to what you were doing. What I'd like to know is how you knew about his shipping company being seized..."
Red smirked and took a mouthful of his scotch.
"Well, it would have been very disappointing if I'd been wrong seeing as I was the one who tipped off the Spanish authorities," he shrugged and she shook her head and laughed.
"It's no wonder you've been on the lam so long. How could anyone keep up with you..." she mused, sipping her drink, becoming very aware that he was staring at her. Steeling herself, she looked up and held his gaze. The heat between them was intoxicating.
"I think, Ms Wilkins, you could probably get a...handle...on me," he said suggestively and she smirked – still they didn't break eye contact. She pursed her lips and shifted closer to him.
"So what do the guards think is happening in this booth right now?" she asked in a low voice, catching her bottom lip between her teeth in a way that made Red want to pull her into his lap right here and now. He finally broke eye contact to take another mouthful of his scotch before turning back to her and, mirroring her move, shifted closer to her, his arm across the back of the booth dropping to let his hand graze across the bare skin of her shoulder.
"They're thinking that it's just about that time of night...You want me, I want you. But both of us are too polite to say 'screw this, let's go'. Your entire body is tingling with desire so intense that it's making you shiver, and if I feel your body grind against me one more time I fear that I might embarrass myself, something I haven't done since I was 15. Of course, all of this tension can be...worked out. If you just come home with me..."
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
"That's what the guards think?" she joked and he laughed.
"That was more my internal monologue. The guards are probably thinking, 'those two should just fuck already'."
Again, the harshness of his language sent a jolt through her that reminded her that, no matter what, this man was dangerous. He was a wanted criminal in every country on earth and here she was, contemplating whether she was going to go to bed with him or not. She was reminded of their conversation last night, about blurred lines and how things weren't always as they seemed.
Her sudden trip on her train of thought seemed to derail him.
"Another drink?" he asked in a resigned tone and, repercussions be-damned, she made her decision.
She trailed a hand into his thick shock of hair, grasping tightly, and pulled his lips to hers for a blistering, heady kiss – all teeth and tongues, moans and whimpers.
"Screw this, let's go," she said with a grin and he laughed as he hauled her to her feet.
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It took them another fifteen minutes to get out of the club, Red taking the opportunity to push her against every flat vertical surface they passed by, and Sophie almost, almost, losing any sense of decorum entirely by thinking about pulling him into an empty bathroom.
He was painfully hard now and too punch drunk, and perhaps actual drunk, to care how that might look to an outsider. His slacks were restrictive enough to allow him to save some face in public. The thought briefly crossed his mind that Dembe would disapprove but he washed it away by pulling Sophie's body back against his, and planting a kiss on the base of her neck as they found their way onto the street.
Dutiful as ever, Dembe was sitting in the car, still parked in its original spot. Red grabbed Sophie around the waist and strode purposefully towards it, opening the back door to allow her in, then climbing in behind her, his arm stretched across the top of the seat, hand delving into her hair, his fingers tangling in her tresses.
"I see you've had fun. But have you had success?" Dembe asked in an even tone.
Red chuckled at his friend's remark, sliding his lips over Sophie's earlobe once before reason took over and he faced forward, not wanting to give his friend an eyeful after he sat waiting all night for them.
"Very successful Dembe. Everything is going according to plan. We've got some work to do tomorrow but right now, I think it's celebration time."
He jerked slightly when he felt Sophie's hand on his thigh. High on his thigh. And curling to the inside of it.
Although he had an idea of the answer, Dembe still asked, "The hotel or..."
"No," Red said firmly. No further instruction was needed.
Dembe nodded, knowing that tonight would be a night for his earplugs, even though he was a floor below Red. On the few occasions that his friend gave in to his base desires, they were never quiet nights. He kept his thoughts to himself though, reasoning that Red needed his own ways of exorcising demons.
Red felt Sophie's hand edge further up the inside of his thigh and he swallowed a huge lump in his throat, exhaling carefully so as not to moan at the eventual feeling of her fingers stroking him through his pants. He felt his stomach tighten in response and he ran his hand down her bare back, desperate to feel her skin.
"You're playing a very dangerous game teasing me like that," he whispered, letting his tongue flick out against the shell of her ear. He caught the smug smile on her face and longed to wipe it off with a breathtaking kiss.
"You said it yourself, I'm just getting a handle on you," she whispered back, twisting her tongue into his ear, making him bite his lip and close his eyes in deep concentration.
Marrakech traffic was not on his side – they were gridlocked and he shifted in his seat, suddenly wishing he had sat in the front. Her touch intensified and his whole body tensed. He turned his head to whisper in her ear.
"If you keep torturing me, I'm going to have to torture you. And out of the two of us, who do you think is more skilled in that practice?"
She looked at him smugly, "I wrote the definitive research paper on detainment camps across the globe," she said with a hint of pomp. He nodded his head, a sharp intake of breath as she squeezed him again.
"Good for you. I've been in most of them."
Their eyes locked and she stifled a laugh, shaking her head at the fact that he had bested her again. He held her gaze for a moment until she shifted her hand again and this time he did moan. Audibly.
"Dembe, is there any way of getting through this fucking traffic?"
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