CHAPTER TWENTY
AINSLEY
T he door slams with a thunk . It seems our blissful bubble—the one Gage and I enjoyed in the serenity of our bedroom for several days—has burst. I popped it. That wasn’t my intent. In fact, I was aiming for the opposite. To reinforce it. But that is a tough angle to explain after everything spun out.
Our KORT meeting ended with Gage getting reamed for using Willie Petes, although there seemed to be some amusement connected to it. They agreed to both of our terms and then proceeded to interrogate me for forty-five minutes while I sat with my organs outside my body. Severed from anything that could make me whole. Eventually, they concluded that I did not have the information they needed. They’re brainstorming some avenues to draw out whoever is fucking with me, and they’ll be in touch.
So, now we wait.
Wait to see what our assignment is.
What our chances are.
Whether we’ll pass or fail. Live or die.
That last part shouldn’t be a we possibility. It was only supposed to be me. A risk I was willing to take to garner some semblance of control after a lifetime of captivity.
Like family, freedom means sacrifice.
When living amounts to zero liberties, death becomes a coveted trade-off.
I would guess that most who’ve been caged would give just about anything for one breath of freedom. I can’t be alone there, in the desire to stand atop the hill of autonomy, if only for a moment. To know that the next step I took was because it was the path I’d forged, not the direction I was being corralled with a gun to my head. And most importantly, to be certain that even if I should die on that godforsaken hill, the people there with me would know it was the only place I wished to be.
That’s the prize I was bartering for.
What I didn’t intend to sacrifice to obtain it was Gage or his family.
The plane ride home was decidedly more somber than the one there. To be fair, it was the middle of the night. It’s nearly dawn now. Most of them dozed off on the flight. Celeste passed me Felicity shortly after we boarded. Knowing Celeste, she had gotten wind of the turmoil ripping through the family—most directed at me—and thought the little princess would be a good shield.
That she was, but the two hours she slept on my chest were a far greater gift. All these years, I’d resisted holding babies, doing whatever was necessary to thwart the possibility. It always felt like betrayal. I couldn’t bear to cradle another until I found my own. Ours . Knew he was safe. Wrapped him in my arms.
But Felicity felt different. Comforting. Maybe because I was finally forced to lay down the search and accept that on this side of Heaven, my little guy couldn’t be with me. And since it’s doubtful I’m headed in that direction, we’ll probably never be reunited. I think it was mostly about gripping a piece of Gage though, a treasure born out of his beautiful family.
That little girl might be the offspring of Wells and Ivy, but she’s the product of seven adults who show up for her every day. Transferring their best attributes to her. And for those two hours, I held that gem. Almost as if she were mine.
Since Gage has locked himself in his office and everyone else has gone to bed, I grab a Modelo and decide to watch the sunrise, hoping it will settle my nerves so I can sleep.
The patio area is so peaceful when I mosey out to one of the loungers near the pool, still dressed in my professional attire. Normally, the guys would be getting up, preparing to work out. Gage and Ivy would be baking in the kitchen. Mornings are generally bustling with the energy of the whole house. Well, other than Rena, who usually awakens far later than me. But today, it’s quiet, cool, tranquil.
Or it was.
A deep voice comes out of nowhere, causing me to jump to my feet, pissed I don’t have my pistol on me.
“Stealing my beer?” Liam .
“Jesus,” I breathe, watching his silhouette emerge from the shadows. “You startled me. I thought everyone went to bed. And, yes, to the beer. Rena said it was okay. I’ll buy some more.”
“Our Little Moonshine thinks she owns the whole damn city.” He huffs a laugh. “She kind of does. So, it’s fine.”
He doesn’t sit. Just leans against one of the pillars on the daybed canopy, loosely holds the neck of his own beer, and flicks his Zippo open and shut several times while I wonder if I should stay or go.
The clanks fill the awkward silence with an unnerving ticking pulse.
Clink. Clank. Clink. Clank. Clink. Clank.
“Do you smoke?” I ask before I lose my damn mind.
“Want one?” he returns.
I’m not a smoker, but Liam hasn’t ever spoken to me apart from the other members of the household, so it seems rude to say no. “Sure. Thanks.”
He shakes his head, lips twitching in mirth. “You drink my beer, smoke my cigarettes. Christ , Morelli, you’re like fucking Goldilocks.” With another flick of his flame, he tacks on a regretful, “Sadly, I don’t have any cigarettes down here.”
“Travesty. What good is a bear without porridge?” I return, adopting the fairy-tale weirdness of this conversation as I resume my spot on the lounger. “I don’t smoke, so no worries.”
After a swig of his beer, he peers out at their property where the first glimmers of light are bleeding into the dark indigo sky. “Bad day?”
I balk. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
He jerks his chin back to the house. “He’s mad, huh?”
My gaze flits out to the horizon, searching for even a tiny speck of orange—my promise of peace. “Mad seems mild.”
He sighs, and I brace myself for the lecture he’s probably about to spew. “Gage and I are the same in ways. Well, one fucking way. No one else in this house understands what it’s like to be thrown out quite like we do. Both of us were discarded like trash on multiple occasions.”
He pulls another swill, and my heart plummets into my stomach. I don’t know Liam’s story, but if it’s anything like Gage’s, that’s awful.
But it’s what he tacks on that spears me. “I think you understand that, have lived it like we have.”
There’s certainly some validity to that, especially after hearing my father order the hit on me. Hindsight shouts that it was true all along, but rose-colored hope kept me from seeing how discarded I was.
My throat clogs with emotion, but I do my best to steady my voice when I utter, “Sure.”
“You’re probably wondering what my fucking point is.” He hums, drinks, snicks his lighter. “I wasn’t sure about you. You’re fucking witty. I enjoy the shit that comes out of your mouth. Can’t get enough of the Italian cussing. But you being here? I wasn’t very happy about it. Celeste has been singing your praises and snippy as fuck about my reservations, but she had a different angle.”
I’ve never shied away from honesty, so I don’t with him. “What angle do you have?”
“You were a traitor, a threat,” he says, his eyes stern. “And I don’t tolerate that when it comes to my family.”
Here we go. I knew he didn’t like me, but this whole situation is one hurdle after another, and I think I’m out of strength to leap. I don’t know why their contempt slices deeper than anyone else’s ever did.
I swig my beer, wishing it were Wells’s scotch—the whole bottle—and grit out a resigned, “That’s fair,” as I stare back at the horizon.
After a long minute, peace comes in the form of coral streaks, breaking through the violet, and words I never expected to hear.
“ Were is the key word in that admission, meaning I don’t think that now. And you’re included in that family group.” He halts until I turn back to him. “Mainly because of what you did tonight.”
That does pique my curiosity. I straighten my back, twisting to face him. “That’s an interesting perspective. I piss him off, wreak mayhem, cause him to risk his life, and you’re suddenly a fan?”
He plops down to sit sideways on the lounger beside mine, his eyes reflecting the coral skies. “You aren’t planning to take that money and run.”
It’s not phrased as a question, more like a he’d-bet-his-life-on-it conviction, and something about that warms my heart with that dangerous thread of hope.
“No, I’m not,” I tell him honestly, forcing myself to maintain eye contact even though it hurts.
He holds my gaze. “But you needed to know you could, needed him to know you could.”
I nod, tears pricking my eyes, nose burning. Liam was the last person I expected to get me, at least as far as my deeper motives. Then again, I hoped some of my actions spoke for themselves. If I had been planning to leave, I would’ve never let them put the damn tracker in me.
“Brave,” he says, swilling his beer with a playful smirk. “Fucking stupid too. But necessary. Admirable.”
“I’m not sure admirable is accurate now that he risked his own life,” I confess, picking at the bottle label.
He swivels in the lounger, kicks his feet out, and leans back, his arm bent behind his head. “Just another day with KORT. It was gonna be a damn mess, no matter what. We knew that. We hoped that if he claimed you, they’d view you as less of a threat. But even then, partnering with a Morelli would’ve been a hard sell.”
“I gathered that too,” I say, gaining purchase on a huge chunk of the sticky paper and carefully pulling. “But the upside to complying would’ve been that when it went south, he would have been angry with them. I demolished all the progress we made.”
“Don’t go caving now. He doesn’t see it, but he will.” He lifts his Modelo, pointing the bottleneck to the ever-changing heavens, almost like he’s toasting someone. “When you choose him—not because you had to, but because after all this time, he’s the only future you want—that’ll be a good fucking day. Gage deserves that day.”
“He deserves everything.” I swallow as the small victory of the peeled label enthralls me. “I guess I just need to make sure we both survive.”
“We’ll all be doing that.” He’s quiet for a moment as we both watch the rays of a new day devour the darkness, his deep tenor suddenly anchoring us. “That’s what family does. And to that point, I’d want you here, even if it wasn’t about him.”
I’m so caught off guard by that. A stunned, “What?” spills out of me.
“You still see yourself as a guest. As an extension of Gage or a woman Ty and Celeste are sheltering. That’s changing. Or changed. I’m a little late to the party.” He grins—nothing but trouble. “But it’s not really a party till I show up.”
His eyebrows waggle, and I’d bet he hears some sort of drumroll for his swagger into any party—or room for that matter. But then his sweet side makes an appearance. “Take it from someone who knows what it’s like to have never really belonged. Soak it in. This is the real deal. You need this family as much as any of us ever have, maybe more. And now you’re part of us.”
“Part of you,” I mumble, my chest constricting because this isn’t blood and he isn’t looking at me like I’m a lamb.
“Family,” he repeats. “You did good. But a little convincing never hurts to heal a man’s ego.”
That makes me laugh because great minds think alike. “I tried,” I admit, “but he locked the door.”
His hazel eyes glint with mischief. “If only there was someone who knew the code.”
I smile, eagerly popping up. “Looks like Goldilocks found something better than porridge or smokes.”
“It’s good to have friends in high places.” He stands and kicks his chin to the back door, urging me to follow. “Give me that half-drank, wasted beer.”
“The plan was to drink it and pass out,” I counter, “but you had to come outside and Chatty-Cathy me. Now it’s warm.”
“Too warm, too cold. Goldilocks is never fucking happy.” He smiles as we cruise inside, dumping the bottles in the trash. But when we reach the office, his voice is low as he punches in the code. “Something tells me it’ll be just right in there. You got this.”
“Thanks, Liam,” I whisper.
“None needed. Give him hell.” He twists the knob and nudges me inside.
As soon as the door swings open, I catch my favorite glimpse of orange. Steely and seething, but with the filtering sunlight, those ambers offer a color like no other.
“There’s a goddamn lock for a reason,” Gage barks, slamming his empty glass tumbler down as the door shuts behind me. He promptly unscrews the cap on the Knob Creek Bourbon bottle and fills that glass back up. “I knew he’d fucking let you in here. Jackass .”
That’s right. I forgot that his office overlooks the pool. So, he knew we were out there. And he didn’t decide to disappear somewhere else.
I strut toward his desk with far more confidence than I possess and make myself comfortable in one of his chairs. It takes a full minute to process the barbaric aesthetics he’s got going. It’s a bit like a torture chamber, which fits. A floor-to-ceiling slatted wall spans the entire length of the room, which has to be twenty feet, and is covered with firearms and every type of deadly blade imaginable.
“I think we should talk,” I begin, to which he glowers, his expression sharper than the tomahawk displayed behind his head.
“You want to sit there and watch me drink, Wicked, be my guest.” He bellows a dark guffaw. “More like my intruder, but fuck it.” Lifting his glass, he stares at the liquid through a massive gulp, making his point. “The only thing I’ll be giving my attention to is the bourbon.”
That’s about as warm of a welcome as I could have hoped for. He didn’t throw me out or hurl one of those daggers at me. And it at least clarifies what method I should utilize to obtain some of that attention.
I rise slowly. The wall of weaponry seems to call for it. No sudden movements. It wouldn’t be shocking to discover there are booby traps in here. But slow also snags a bit of the focus he promised to be stingy with.
Slow is seductive.
A waltz with a predator.
I untie the belt on my jumpsuit, slip my shoulders out of it, and let the material slink down my body, puddling at my feet. That leaves me in my lacy red bra and matching thong. Kicking off my shoes, I step out of the garment, toss it over the back of the chair, and slide my high heels on again, all while the man with amber eyes remains intrigued by his amber liquor. Well, except for the covert glance he’s casting my direction.
“No one’s going to save you if you flirt with death here,” he sneers, drowning himself in more bourbon. Another guzzle. Another pour.
“Yes, sir. Consider me warned,” I rasp, and his eyes flick to me. Molten with both vexation and cravings.
That tends to be the winning combo with us, so I commit to my endeavor, prowling around his desk—which is barren other than his bottle of alcohol—to seat myself before him on top of it.
He relaxes back in his chair, his drink in hand, stern gaze planted on me in challenge. And, fuck, he looks like a king. Still in his all-black suit, though the top few buttons on his shirt are undone, his Italian horn necklace on display. The government may have named him Porter, but he couldn’t abandon his heritage.
Which leads me to the detail taking center stage—his ink. There are the ones on his neck—a scorpion steals that show. But my focus settles on the tattoos he got for me. For us . Even when he hated me.
I’d like to think that while I was enduring those hard days, talking to his spirit and wondering if he could hear me, maybe part of him could. Maybe my pleas and prayers took flight and found him. And somewhere deep inside, he couldn’t erase us because he knew there was no me without him. I’d like to think even if he didn’t fully grasp it then, he does now. I suppose he alluded to a version of that theory the day he had me carve the W into his chest, but I’m not sure he grasped how lost I’d been without him.
When he polishes off the final sip in his glass and sets it on his desk, I clutch the bottle before he can snatch it.
“That’s your game, Ains? Keep away, like we’re ten?”
“I have no intention of keeping it away.” Unscrewing the cap, I shimmy myself backward to accommodate my widespread legs, the backs of my knees at the edge so I’m splayed out before him. “You can have as much as you want. But since you’re only paying attention to the bourbon”—I pour a half shot on my left breast, reveling in his eyes tracking the spilling liquor and the flourishing of goose bumps it produces, before I replicate the move on the right—“I thought product placement was wise.”
His jaw is clenched, hands fisted. He’s either turned on or homicidal. Who am I kidding? That’s one and the same with us. Emphasized by the growing bulge in his pants and the laser focus he’s got on the wet spots on my bra cups, alluring circles surrounding my resolute nipples. With the hunger marring his face, my panties will have a matching spot at any minute. No bourbon needed.
But beyond that, I understand him. I’m like him. The only way to heal our wounds is to embrace the rage, so I stoke his fury. One ember at a time.
“Thirsty?” I bat my lashes and dangle the bottle between my thumb and index, teasing the pour that will awaken his feral beast, while his breaths pant out.
“Don’t do it unless you’re prepared to be ravaged.” He bends forward, fingers digging into my hips and ass as he bites my nipple, teeth sinking in to deliver a painful zip through my breast that has me gasping, followed by him lewdly sucking on the fabric with a pit-bull-ish shake of his head. “I won’t be gentle.” Those crazed ambers snap to me in warning. “You’ll get exactly what you fucking deserve.”
“Magic”—I raise the bottle, my tongue darting out to lick my lips—“fucking”—tip it, suspending it there while we engage in a stare-down, chests heaving in unison—“words”—and spill the amber liquid so it splashes into a stream.
For a fraction of a second, we both watch it go. Mesmerized.
That bourbon river has a terribly dirty mind. It winds from the valley between my breasts, beneath the thin strip of fabric on my bra, to the flat plane of my stomach, and finally soaks into my red panties, atop my aching pussy.
My heart whomps my sternum.
And that still, mesmerizing nanosecond ends.
He roars like a ravenous fiend, dragging me to his open mouth. The momentum throws me back onto my elbows while he tears my panties from my body with his teeth and grazes my clit in the process, inciting a savage cry to lurch from my lungs.
Ravaging me is an understatement. He drinks like an animal parched in the desert.
And I liquefy. A boneless mess of soupy lust.
“Fuck,” I wheeze from the sensation of him vacuuming my clit into his mouth, but then in a flash, he flips me over onto my stomach, stealing the bottle and binding my wrists in his massive hand.
It happens so fast; my mind struggles to acclimate, urging me to fight. Or fly. Even though my dripping core clearly yearns to stay. But instincts win out.
I thrash in his hold, so he pins me to the desk, lying over me. His weight, his heat, his scent. His breath fanning over my neck and his hard cock nudging my ass. My cage and my escape.
“You never fucking stop,” he growls, nibbling on my ear and thrusting two fingers roughly inside me.
So, I do stop.
And for a still minute, he rests his forehead on my hair and expels his pain. “You gutted me tonight.”
“I chose you tonight.”
By the thunderous rumble from his chest, I’d say that wasn’t a sentiment he was ready to hear.
In the next blink, he showcases his masterful skills. He gathers my hair, twirling it into a knot before staking it to the desk with a knife speared into the wood. My cheek is pressed firmly to the surface, head immobile. My ankles are kicked wide and strapped to the legs of the desk. And in the subsequent beat, my arms are stretched and tied over the front.
My view—the sun rising over the pool for the tail end of golden hour. Subtle tufts of orange melting into a blanket of blue.
“You might want to shut the blinds,” I suggest.
To that, he slices off my bra, lobs it across the room, and tsks. “Ahh, don’t sissy out after that bratty performance, Wicked. Let the whole house see how you aren’t a claimed woman.”
That’s on me. I really should’ve seen that coming.
“Sweet fucking freedom,” he continues, plunging three fingers into me, only to pull them out, smear my arousal up on my ass, and repeat. “And yet your cunt sure weeps while you’re captive. Dripping everywhere. You’ll be licking up your mess when we’re done.”
Stars speckle my vision. His words, the anticipation, the fullness—dizzying.
“Be sure to save me some bourbon to go with my cum. I’ll add some spices, call it eggnog, and have Christmas in July,” I sass with a goading wiggle of my hips.
His flat-palm spank arrives with no forewarning, shooting a stinging tingle to the depths of my bones. A sultry bleat leaks out of me to harmonize with the clap that rings through the humid air.
“Filthy girl. You like that, baby?” he asks as another swat rains down upon the opposite cheek to plunder any of my remaining poise. “Crave me showing you who you belong to?”
My only response is a whimpered, “More.”
“Fucking hell,” he groans, thumbing my virgin hole past the first stage of resistance. “Bound to my desk, at my mercy, my handprints blooming on that luscious ass, bite marks branding your shimmery skin, and you’re still treacherous. Just the sight of you—goddamn lethal.”
He issues another spank, relishing my hissed expletives before cold liquid splatters onto the channel of my spine, rocketing a chill through the whole of me. Just above my ribs, he poured a hefty amount, and as the bourbon brook begins its cascade, he drops to his knees to catch it. Such a simplistic move, and yet it’s one more sensation to throw my senses into a wanton overdrive.
They all swarm me, a thrill conquering every cell.
My wrists and ankles burning. Bones aching. Neck crooked.
Chilled and sweaty. Sprawled and tied. Wet and stinging.
Desperate, zealous, and starved.
For him.
The cool rivulet trickles down my back, through my crack, and into his ravenous mouth. Licking, slurping, sucking. Devouring. His scruff serves up a delicious bristle to my inner thighs as he feasts on every part of me—clit to entrance to my virgin hole—but never quite delivering what I need.
He taunts and teases, trailing his tongue over the entire length of the dissipating river while working two cum-coated fingers into my ass, a scissor-like motion that has me heady and squirming—a carnal craze for friction consuming me despite the prickling twinge from him loosening me. He’s been prepping me for the last couple of days, but I think he’s decided to go all in .
There’s some racket I can’t quite process, which is quickly followed by a buzz, and then he shoves one of my vibrators into my pussy. It has a lip on it for my clit.
Although he’s got it set too low to get the job done, within ten seconds, I’m humming approval and shamelessly chanting, “Please,” and, “More,” again and again while he douses my ass with what I assume is lubricant.
“This gun oil makes fantastic lube. Nontoxic. Fucking genius. Thought you might search my drawers upstairs,” he explains further as three slick fingers stretch me and the swoosh of his dress pants melting into the floor resounds, “so I hid your toys down here. Lucky for you. Otherwise, I’d be fucking your greedy cunt with a pistol.”
“And that’s so cliché,” I quip through my erotic fog, unable to see him due to my impaled hair. “Who hasn’t been strapped down and fucked with a gun these days?”
A laugh blares from him—the first hint of his softer side—as his fingers retreat and his cock breaches my second hole, instantly burning the ring of muscles. “Tales from your audio porn?”
Nothing is a secret in this house. Not that the girls and I were hiding the spicy audiobooks. Porn is a stretch, but whatever. I don’t answer because in true Gage fashion, he doesn’t hold back. I mean, he doesn’t thrust inside me with the vigorous punch he would my pussy. He won’t hurt me, but despite knowing the gist of my past sexual experiences, he doesn’t handle me like glass either.
He takes.
And I want nothing more than to give.
“I’m good,” I assure him, longing for the discomfort—the impossible fullness, the pain-stained pleasure, the healing retribution. “I can take it.”
A craggy breath stutters out of him, washing over my skin for an eruption of shivers down my spine and limbs as he pushes inside me, inch by exquisite inch, until nearly at the hilt, igniting a fire to combat those chills. An inferno I never want to extinguish.
“Fuck.” He freezes for us both to adjust, his cock pulsing.
The intensity is staggering, how overcrowded my core is while simultaneously aching for him to cram more into me. Everything throbs. In the best of ways. Blasting me into a hallucinatory state, where it’s impossible to stay grounded even though we’re rooted in this moment.
When he finally moves, he recalls his wrath. “Yeah, Wicked, you will take it.”
Gladly.
His hands slink beneath me to tweak my nipples—hard—another tender dose of torment that ripples through me while he pistons his hips, ramming into me with panting breaths and savage groans.
“You feel that? Me? Everywhere? I own you, Ains. You’re mine.”
Pump.
“Every.”
Thrust.
“Fucking.”
Slam.
“Part.”
Harder.
“More,” I squeak out because it’s all I can manage as the world shakes and topples. Exhaustion and ecstasy colliding for an intoxicating rapture.
He turns up the speed on my vibrator, flattens his palm between my shoulder blades to hold me down—as if I could go anywhere—and pounds into me. “You want more? I want fucking everything .”
“You have it,” I return.
“This ass.” Spank. “This cunt.” Thrust. “Your heart.” Swat. “Your future.” Slam. “Mine.”
“All yours,” I promise, my heart hammering everywhere, my vision blurring, my clit pulsating, my body on the brink of euphoria. “I’m gonna—”
“That’s right,” he trills like a battle cry. “Come with my cock in your ass and my name on your lips, out here in the open so everyone can see what a good whore my wife will be.”
Those two words were once a manipulative phrase spoken by Nick, a reminder of my noose. But my wife from Gage’s mouth sings out like liberty, urging me to leap. It’s as exciting as being his good whore .
“Jesus, Gage,” I shriek.
And the room fades to amber—a beautiful reckoning of our story.
Then and now. Yesterdays and tomorrows.
The boy who saw me, the man who saved me, the liquor squandered, and the dawn light.
The punishment and the prize.
And here, staked to a desk within orange-tinted grace, I inhale that coveted breath and soar.
“Fucking Christ, Ains,” he grunts through three ragged pumps, taking flight with me.
His body jolts from the frisson of electricity zipping through us. And we both quake and moan and tremble, until he covers my naked body with his shirt-clad torso, his dick still buried inside me, the vibrator still abuzz to deliver friction that is too much.
But somehow, our mutual release helps him find his breath—it’s choppy but there. “Why? Why couldn’t you give me this? Just once, let me take care of you?”
“That’s why.” I peer outside at the blue water and clear skies as he sweetly kneads my sore ass. “Because you do take care of me. You are the man who empowers me, sees me, lets me fight. You can’t be that if you shackle me too.”
He scoffs. “From my vantage point, it’s the opposite. I am still all those things, and look at you. Tied down by me and completely at peace.”
He’s not wrong. The image of us right now is a perfect representation of who we are. What works and what won’t.
I nod, my cheek sticky on the desk. “I love this, needed it. But only because I know you’ll untie me. If I was going to be bound forever, I’d be plotting to break free and kill you.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, ripping the knife out of my hair.
Even though he gets it, he still hurts, and I hate that, so I whisper, “Yeah,” but expand on the sentiment to ease that heartache. “You’re a dream come true, Gage Porter. New look. New name. Same heart I prayed for one more day with. I want you to keep being my gift—the one I wake up to each morning, grateful for, even when we’re mad because fighting with you is still the best future I can imagine. It won’t be if you’re my warden.”
“Warden?” He swallows, plainly wounded. “That’s not how I thought of it, but …” He presses his lips to mine for a kiss that is sweet, soft, and reconciling before he brushes my hair back and pecks my nose. “Okay, Ains. I’m honored to be your gift because you’re definitely mine. But the claiming is the only concession I’ll make. Otherwise, you need to let me take the reins to get us through this.”
I smile my agreement, relieved that we’re bridging yet another chasm between us, and toss out our first order of business, “What now?” since I’m still pinned to his desk in front of the open windows and time is marching on.
But his mind is distracted by a much more tragic dwindling of time.
He shakes his head, brows arched in resignation. “For starters, we don’t die.”