<span style="font-family: 'Arial'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff9999"><i>Rory, you have you to be fucking kidding me.</i><br/>
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Even though she heard the hum of the engine die in the driveway, the sound of his footsteps treading carefully through the house, even the subtle click of the hammer being drawn back on the piece he carried, the girl hadn't bothered to pause – or even look up – from where she had made herself at home with a box of his files he had stashed in the back of his closet. She was just putting the first away, her toes stretching and the hem of his shirt lifting to lay bare the twin globes of her backside for his viewing pleasure as she slid it back home and pulled down the next one. She paused only when she felt his stare bore between her shoulder blades. And this was even after he had put the gun away.<br/>
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The ginger mane flipped over one shoulder as she jerked her head to the side to catch a glimpse of the man that she had memorized from the years they had spent together. Champagne tipped off with chartreuse widened at the sight of him now, soaking in his presence from her peripheral. The tenseness of his shoulders tucked inside the suit he wore. The dark lines on his face as he tried to work out just how he <i>really </i>wanted to react with her standing there like that. Her lips parted, surprised but not, and she froze like a cat caught doing something naughty – like scratching up the furniture – before she decided to pivot, box of files still cradled in her arms, to face him fully. Now the shirt at least dangled to her thighs, hiding her most intimate spots, but still leaving the pale stretch of leg bare. <br/>
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“You weren't supposed to be back yet,” she sounded back at him. Her voice was strangely calm for having been caught red handed in this act – breaking and entering weren't typically things that people stood there nonchalantly for. The gentle moue of her mouth twisted up into a mischief maker's grin now that her eyes landed on him fully. “You're dressed awfully nice, Dante. You didn't have to get dressed up for me,” she teased finally. “I sure didn't.” <br/>
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She stalked out of his closet, attention riveted on his face, and moved over to the carefully made bed to set the box of files down before she herself took a perch, thighs pressed together to save her modesty. Her hands slid away from around the box to rest in her lap. Her way of attempting to look more at ease than what the tension in her shoulders or the open curiosity on her face suggested. She was a mixture of blanched pale with two cherry spots flushing her cheeks, slowly spreading its way down to her collar. “But since you are here, maybe you can help me find something that I left behind here a lot easier than I've managed. What do you say? Help a girl out and then I'll be out of your hair?”<br/>
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Emotion surged just below the surface as she continued to watch and see how he was reacting. Part of her wanted to leap up from the bed and fling herself at him to assuage the ache in her chest, while the other was worry, the shadow of their last hour together making its grim returned and cresting her with the shame that kept her pinned in place now. Her words might have been pitched high, joking, for his and her benefit both, that that didn't stop the tremor of tension that quivered between the two.</span></span>