Sloppy…if Mal minded getting caught.
As Danny’s fingers grazed the cuff Mal wore, he glanced down at it. Mal’s arms were otherwise nothing but skin from his shoulders to his wrists. The cuff did draw some attention.
“Love to help you out of that suit again, Sparky, but I’d need my hands.” Mal wriggled his fingers and smirked playfully. Glancing at the lines of the suit and the smoothness of the cowl, he wondered where the communications lived. “Aren’t you worried your friends will listen in?”
Releasing Mal’s wrists, Danny looked him in the eyes. Mal used the freedom to reach forward for the seam at Danny’s neck and fold the mask upward. “Told them it was a false alarm once I was sure it was you,” Danny said when his lips were free. “For all they know, I’m making a quick pass around town and heading home for the night. We’re all alone.”
“Dom and Lucy are in the other rooms,” Mal admitted, watching Danny’s lips attentively. “Got about three minutes before they come looking.”
“I can take care of that.”
Mal quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Nicely,” Danny assured him, then ducked forward, angling for a kiss Mal allowed him only too eagerly.
The firm line of Danny’s body snugly outlined in black was welcome and alluring when Mal was ready for it. His pulse was already racing from the adrenaline of the heist; Danny’s arrival and subsequent reaction to finding him had Mal trembling with excitement.
When they pulled apart, Danny flicked his tongue at Mal’s lips. “Helios and Gaia are suddenly going to find themselves outside in the alley, wondering what happened. Think they’ll come back in after you?”
“Nah. They’ll know it was you and hightail it. You gonna let them keep their loot?”
“Tell you what, if you have the diamond in your hands by the time I get back, you can keep it.And…” Danny leaned forward and added in a sultry whisper, “you can fuck me anywhere you want in the museum.” He bit his bottom lip invitingly before pulling his mask back into place.
Mal shivered. This version of Danny Grant he adored. An added challenge, a worthwhile goal. He felt silly now for ever thinking this heist could disrupt their fun. He’d passed an antique chaise in the section on The French Revolution. Sullying that would be entertaining, and more comfortable than the floor, a wall, or up against a glass case.
Mmm…Danny pressed against glass…
“Hey,” Danny said with an audible pout, “I thought you promised me a three-piece suit for your next heist.”
Mal blinked. He’d completely forgotten about that, and he rarely neglected such important details. “Guess I’ve been a bad boy, Zeus. I owe you one. You go ahead and thinklongandhardabout what you want from me to make up for it.”
A chuckle left the kid, only slightly muffled by his mask. “You have about thirty seconds, Ice Man—and that’s being generous,” he said before lightning jumping away.
Mal didn’t waste a moment. While he’d turned off his mic, he could still hear his companions through his earpiece, and he clearly picked up on the oomphs of them being suddenly teleported out of the building by an invisible Zeus. Meanwhile, he set to work on the diamond. Thirty seconds was child’s play.
Raising both hands, he iced the pane of glass facing him, coating it in frost and decreasing the temperature until it started to crack. Then all he had to do was tap the center. It crumbled like sand without tripping the alarm. The back pane of the case was a mirror, doubling the diamond’s image for its adoring public. As Mal reached in to claim his prize, something in the reflection shimmered.
He snatched his hand back as the image of the diamond turned foggy, thenempty, then was replaced by a grasping silver hand that reached right out of the reflection into the case.
Mal was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. But as he stared at the hand that took hold of the diamond, he also heard a voice, powerful and loud like it was coming from all around him.
“Just like the glassworks, right...partner?”
Thehell?Glassworks? Was thatLudgate?
It was only when the hand pulled back into the mirror, taking the diamond with it, that Mal realized he wasn’t alone. Whipping his head to the right, he discovered that Danny had seen everything, but he clearly had the wrong idea about what it all meant if his clenched fists were any indication.
“Wait—” Mal raised his hands, but by the time he’d finished the gesture, he’d already been slammed into the wall. He couldn’t turn on the cold field with his wrists pinned.
“Partner?!Partner?!”Danny’s breath puffed hot against Mal’s face through the mask. “You were working with Ludgate the whole time?!”
“What?No, I—”
“I trusted you!” Danny cried, gripping him too tightly, painfully, as he shook him. “I can’t believe I fell for your actagain. I knew you deserved it, I knew it…” he muttered as he seethed, shaking in his anger—and what did he even mean by that? “Playing all the angles, making a big show of it, while thoseother heists kept happening all around me, making me look like afool.”
“Sparky, listen to—”
An eruption of noise in his ear made him cringe as Dom and Lucy remembered the comms and started yelling at him, demanding to know what was happening. Lucy asked if they should head back in, but Dom huffed and said, “Trust me, Evergreen, he don’t need shit if he’s with Spark Plug. Favorite pastime of his lately.”
