“What are you thinking?” Emma asked when Cain turned around and rinsed the shampoo out.

“I’m thinking that I should’ve never left something like this to an idiot like Oblonsky. You know how I feel about loose ends, and Nicola will be a threat to the family until she’s put down like a rabid dog.” She took the bath sponge from Emma and returned the favor. “I’m sorry this trip didn’t turn out like we’d planned.”

“You think I’m worried about that?” Emma pinched her as she bit her shoulder. “There’s time for fun and time for work. Right now, I need you to finish what you started. If Nicola is just wounded and figures out you had anything to do with that, she’s really going to come after you.”

“You can tell her yourself that I’m taken.” She kissed Emma and pressed her against the shower wall. “I’m ready to get home and to familiar turf.”

“You’re on familiar turf right now,” Emma said, dropping to her knees. She had to fight to stay on her feet when Emma did her best to drive her insane. It ended too soon, but she wasn’t selfish and picked Emma up and pressed her to the wall again and slammed her fingers in. There was something to be said for fast and passionate, but she didn’t want a steady diet of it.

“And you know your way around the terrain,” Emma said with her legs wrapped around Cain’s waist.

“I much prefer the scenic route, but I’ll take you however I can get you.”

They finished and had coffee in the main room of the suite, dressed in the hotel robes. Emma called home as she checked for messages, and she let Emma’s voice relax her as she listened to her talking to the kids.

“We’ll be home by the time school ends, so be good for your grandparents.”

There was a message from Sacha as well as one from Angelo, both of them asking her to call. At the moment she was interested in talking to Angelo more than Sacha. Maybe if Sacha had the opportunity in the future to make the choice of accepting help from someone who knew what they were doing instead of going on his own, he’d wise up. She doubted it, though. People like Sacha went through life wearing the blinders their upbringing clamped on them.

“Good morning, Angelo,” she said, stepping back in the bedroom.

“My man tells me you talked to the doctor.”

“He did a lot of talking, and it was nothing I wanted to hear. That bitch is still alive, or she was last night.” The street under their window was full of people, and all of them seemed in a hurry to get somewhere.