I laughed, saluting him, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest. “Oh, I’m sure.”

The brunette was looking back and forth between us, a growing horror in her eyes. “Babe?”

“I know,” I said, sparing her a glance. A fine sheen of sweat glazed her brow, and a blush was vivid but fading across her chest. “I didn’t much care for that term, either.”

Jackal smoothed his mussed hair back. It wasn’t that I was angry—though I was, but not because he’d brought another woman into the office. Or, rather, exactly because he’d brought another woman into the office and into our games—civilian casualties weren’t my style.

“You proved your point,” I said.

The girl jumped from the desk and jammed a finger into my face. “You sick bitch, what the hell do you—”

“Easy,” I said. “He’s not worth fighting over.” I opened my arms, the gin zipping up and down my veins, looking at Jackal as I said it. “You want him? He’s all yours.”

She glared at me, still finishing her buttons, and I raised my eyebrows and let my arms drop. “I didn’t think so,” I said after a moment. I jerked my head to the door, eyes on the girl again. “I imagine you’re a bit sticky. There’s a bathroom down the hall.”

Jackal made a show of watching her ass as she walked past, but she turned and glared at him from the door. “You sick shit,” she said, and then she walked out, slamming his door behind her. The twinge of a conscience I thought I’d gotten rid of rose into my throat, but I pushed it down. Jackal had brought her into this, not me. And maybe next time, she’d be smarter. Maybe this memory would save her from the next pretty asshole who looked twice at her over a beer.

“Next time you’re pissed at me,” I said, “take it out on me.”

Jackal snorted, his perfectly shaped lips curling up into a sneer. “Please,” he said. “You think you’re any better, what you do with those girls?”

“That’s different.”

Jackal didn’t say anything, just stared at me, arms crossed. The wiry black hairs of his forearms fluttered with the fan overhead.

“They know what they’re getting into,” I said, not sure why it mattered to me. To Jackal, what we did was only a paycheck. I bent down and grabbed the abandoned scarf from Jackal’s floor, twirling it around my own neck.