No Stranger to Danger by No Stranger to Danger (Evernight)

peach-colored slip, her panties and bra visible through the thin material.
    "Well don't stare." She started forward and grabbed the clothing from him. "It's not like you haven't seen me undressed more than this before. What did you find?"
    She let the dull, long garment fall to the floor and made a face. "Uh." She cocked her head at him.
    "That should keep you out of notice." Logan stepped around her, uncomfortable at the reminder she was presenting him with. "Just until we are in Caracas."
    He stepped behind her and then tossed a black scarf over her shoulder.
    Mara plucked it up by her fingers, studying it with an O shape to her mouth.
    "Don’t forget the hijab," he taunted.
    She sighed and balled the dress and scarf together. "Did you get a flight?"
    "Yeah." Logan pulled his black t-shirt over his head and tossed it on the back of a wooden ladder-back chair by a small table near the window. He reached down and took his weapon from the leg-holster around his thigh, setting it on the table by the bed before he unstrapped the holster and set it aside, too. "We leave tonight, so if you want to rest, better do that now."
    "What is that?" Mara asked.
    Logan looked up to find her staring in horror at his abdomen, just above his pants. He looked down on himself, to the red whelp around the area where he had injected the chip, and not far above were open wounds left from the battery, the frost-on-windowpane red branches stretching out over his side where Taj had touched the cables to his skin. The vine-like pattern spread halfway across his torso, over the Latin words Sine Missione —Without Mercy—tattooed on his ribcage, wrapping around from the underside of his left pectoral, and disappearing on his side under his arm.
    Logan looked away from her pained expression.
    "That's what Conyers’s buddy Taj would have done to you, too." Logan reached down to where the microchip was. "And this is what Conyers wants back," he said, looking back up to her, not caring to explain the rest of his new scars since last she'd seen him. "If something happens to me, you have to cut that out and take it to MacKall yourself."
    Mara blanched and pushed her hair from her face. "I don't even know where to find him."
    A glimpse of her fear washed over her as she ran her fingertips over her lips and dropped her hand to her side, her other fist clutched around the bunched dress. Her stare raked over his torso, and damn his soul to hell, he wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms—to touch his lips to hers.
    Logan walked over to Mara. He wasn't sure she wanted any comfort that came from him, but he stopped in front of her and brushed his hands over her dark hair. She instantly looked up at him, but quickly away as her eyes became teary. She looked anywhere but at him or the scars uncovered now.
    Logan smoothed his hand over her hair, the strands like silk against his fingers, and he remembered lying in bed with her many nights and watching her, touching her soft skin as she slumbered. She would sigh in her sleep at his touch. Logan dropped his hands and clenched them into fists.
    Those days were gone, despite how the memories stirred him to wish that they were not—to wish that he were someone different.
    "I hope life has been good to you since I left," he murmured.
    Mara snorted and stepped around him toward the bed. She went to the side opposite his weapon and holster, and tossed back the covers. "It was, until I got fired from my job. I would have had my house on the market by now, and hopefully would have had an offer, too. But I would guess my house has turned into a crime scene after I disappeared, after that mongrel kidnapped me." A fleeting glower crossed over her.
    Logan frowned. "Why were you fired?"
    Mara paused, started to speak, but then shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You don't want to know."
    He frowned a moment.
    Whatever it was clearly upset her.
    Logan flipped off the light and went to the bed, too. He dropped down on top