Chapter 40 #2
I nudged her gently. “What is it?”
She shook her head, but I wasn’t letting it go. “Come on, spill it, Thompson.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she finally spoke, her voice softer. “I’m just relieved. When you left my room tonight, I thought I ruined something between us, but…” She trailed off, leaving an unspoken question hanging in the air.
I raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at my lips. “You think a hot chick getting drunk and coming on to me would scare me away forever? What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I wasn’t coming on to you,” she hissed.
I grinned. “No? Then what would you call it?”
She crossed her arms, all defensive. “Temporary insanity.”
I barked out a laugh. “Fine, Counselor. But even temporarily insane, you were still coming on to me.”
She uncrossed her arms, and then shrugged, casually. “Which you couldn’t handle, by the way.”
I stilled, all humor instantly gone, then straightened my spine. “You think I couldn’t handle it?”
She squinted, mouth curling into a challenge. “No, I think I called you hot and all the blood rushed to your dick. Your brain short-circuited.”
I caught her gaze, then slowly stepped toward her. Her breathing hitched as I forced her to retreat against the wall.
With a low growl, I murmured in her ear, “If you think calling me hot is something I can’t handle, what exactly do you hope will happen when you talk about my dick?”
I felt her swallow—hard.
She was affected by me. I could see it, sense it… fuck, the heat rolling off her made me turn almost feral. I had to remind myself now was neither the time nor place and keep my dick on a leash.
“Careful, little nightcrawler,” I purred, my tone darker now. “You keep poking the beast, and I might just show you exactly how well I can handle you.”
I leaned in, let my breath brush her ear. “And trust me—you’d love every fucking second of it.”
Then I stepped back. Let her go.
Her cheeks were flushed, lips parted, eyes so dark with hunger it almost made me lose control all over again.
She blinked a few times, shoved me lightly in the chest, and muttered, “Fucking player.”
I winked. “Said with such conviction. Almost like you mean it.”
A slow smile curved at her mouth, and my focus locked there—sharp, hungry. Fuck, I wanted to shove her against the wall and kiss that smile off her face—taste it, ruin it, feel it give beneath mine.
“I still think you’re the dark prince of charm and deception,” she said, a note of relief in her voice, “but I’m glad you didn’t write me off just yet.”
“You need to have more faith in people, Thompson,” I teased, tone light but pointed. “Don’t worry—nothing you say or do is ever going to scare me off.”
She cleared her throat, a pink flush rising up her neck and blooming across her cheeks. “Not even if I admitted I got drunk on your 74-year-old Macallan?”
I straightened, blinking once. Hard. “You didn’t.”
Her hands fidgeted, twisting the hem of her shirt as if she could wring the self-condemnation out of it. Her lips parted, and her voice wavered. “I’m so—”
I shot up a hand. “Shh.”
Footsteps rang out—sudden, loud, too close.
We froze, breath locked, and the tension stretched between us as the footsteps closed in—boots striking rock in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
I motioned her back, pressing her into the wall and shifting in front of her, shielding her with my body. If someone stepped into the tower, all they’d see was me. And if it came to it—I’d make damn sure she had time to portal out.
The steps paused, lingered…then faded.
I exhaled slowly and eased her out of the shadows. She scanned the corridor—quick, focused. I glanced behind us. Still clear. For now.
"Keep your head down and cloak us as much as possible," I whispered, leading her toward the stairwell. "We need to get more intel on this Layer of Protection around the mountain before we portal out there. Can you see any Radicals from here?"
Emma leaned forward, scanning the drop, then shook her head. “No. But I could open a portal—get eyes on what’s below?”
“Negative,” I said quickly. “If they’re here, it’ll give us away.”
I exhaled through my nose, irritation pressing behind my ribs. We were working blind. “We’ll have to go see for ourselves. One hour of recon. Then we move out of here.”
Emma nodded quickly.
We had barely set foot on the stairs when muffled voices reached us from below, ringing through the ancient corridors, distorted by the old architecture. Too many walls between us to pinpoint their direction. Too many places they could be.
Then, out of nowhere, an explosion hit.
A deafening blast cracked through the air, followed by the subterranean rumble of collapsing masonry. The entire fort shuddered violently under our feet. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A support beam groaned somewhere above us, then snapped with a gut-deep crack.
“Move,” I barked, shoving her to safety just in time.
A chunk of ceiling crashed down just behind us. I grabbed Emma by her wrist, and dragged her toward a jagged hollow in the wall—an irregular, shadowed gap, as if the building had cracked open just wide enough to let us slip inside.
We pressed into the space as the building around us trembled, debris clattering down in bursts of rubble and splinters.
Emma covered her head instinctively, her body pressed up against mine. My arm braced across her as another tremor shook the floor beneath us. Somewhere deeper in the fort, something gave way entirely—a distant roar of stone falling into black.
We stayed like that, breath held, dust thick in our lungs. The voices had gone silent now—either scattered or drowned out by the chaos. For a few long seconds, all we could do was listen to the crumble and shift of the fort around us, hoping it didn’t decide to bury us alive.
Finally, the tremor eased. The air settled. I lowered my arm, scanning what I could see of the corridor.
“Are you okay?” I murmured.
Emma gave a breathless nod, eyes sharp despite the dust on her lashes. “What the hell was that?”
“No fucking idea,” I muttered, frustration biting deeper. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough already.
She shifted to move, but I caught her wrist again, and pulled her back—hard. She slammed into me, her back flush to my chest, hips locking against me.
Fuck, I felt that.
“Don’t move yet,” I breathed against her neck. “We don’t know where they are. Give it a minute before you go charging ahead.”
She nodded, but the tension in her body was unmistakable—shoulders drawn, every muscle coiled tight. The air around us was thick with dust and the acrid bite of scorched concrete. It reeked of collapse, of panic barely held at bay.
She was pressed against me in the narrow space, every breath short and uneven, her chest rising and falling. I could feel the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat—fast and full—like it belonged to me.
Her scent filled the air before I even realized I was inhaling. Subtle. Familiar. Laced with heat.
And just like that, the proximity slammed into me.
My mind betrayed me, flashing back to earlier—her body pinned beneath mine, the unguarded look in her eyes, filled with lust.
Motherfucker.
My body was next to betray me.
The heat rolling off her skin, the intoxicating mix of adrenaline and the memory of her soft curves in my hands, coursed through me like a drug I couldn’t fight. My pulse thundered, my throat went dry, and every nerve in my body screamed at me to get a grip.
But the desire surged anyway—dark, hungry, and unrelenting. It pressed against the edges of my restraint, daring me to move, to touch, to close that final inch. Daring me to cross a line I knew damn well I shouldn't even be thinking about.
I shifted slightly, desperate for space that didn’t exist.
Don’t get hard, Colt. Don’t you fucking dare.
My jaw flexed as her head tilted, her breath ghosting along my collarbone like she knew exactly what it would do to me.
Light, teasing—but devastating. She was smaller, sure—but there was strength in her stillness, in the way she leaned into me without fear.
And fuck, it only made something sharper twist in my gut. Something possessive. Primal.
Her gaze lifted, catching mine in the dark—wide, unguarded, shining with something I couldn’t name. Fear, maybe, or something deeper, more dangerous, something that threatened to pull me under.
“Caden,” she whispered, soft but steady, threading straight through me like heat. “What are we going to do?”
The way she said my name, the trust in her voice—it was almost enough to break me. I clenched my fists at my sides, holding myself together with sheer willpower, but the hunger for her roared louder.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to focus. “We stay quiet and wait for an opportunity. We need to figure out where they’re keeping the Amplifier, figure out what their Layer is, what their movements are, and how to get out of this fucking fort without alerting them.”
Emma gave a curt nod, her resolve evident even in the dim light. There was no room for fear now—only action.
I closed my lids briefly and tried to push the attraction to the back of my mind.
I failed.