Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33658 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 135(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
“They gave me the drug.”
Cautiously, I step a few inches closer to her, encouraged when she doesn’t object. “It cured your cancer.”
“It made me an addict and a slave to whatever that man wants of me. That’s not a cure.”
“We’ll find an antidote.”
“More than an antidote,” she replies vehemently. “I’ll make an immunization that keeps ICE from working. I’ll make sure he doesn’t turn anyone else into a slave at his mercy if it’s the last thing I do on this Earth, so help me, God.”
I stiffen at the words despite my approval, reminded that we most certainly are being recorded, watched, and listened to, and her statement is the kind of provocation that will get us both killed.
And she doesn’t stop there. She’s fired up and angry. “I’m going to destroy—”
I react before she can finish her statement, doing exactly what I know Julian will want me to do, but doing it for myself, not him. I close the distance between me and Layla, pull her into my arms, and kiss her to shut her up. No. I kiss her because I have to, because every fiber of my being needs to feel her next to me to claim her in a way I don’t try to analyze. My tongue parts her lips, brushes past her teeth, and strokes deeply, the sweet honey of her bleeding into my mouth. She moans softly with a primal quality, as if she understands that unknown feeling better than I do. She melts into me, sliding her arms around my neck and rising to her toes to taste me too.
“Jensen,” she whispers.
Possessiveness flares inside me like nothing I’ve ever experienced with any other woman. If anyone tries to touch her—Julian, Tad, anyone in this damnable place—I’ll kill them.
She’s mine to protect and mine to save.
Fuck, she’s just plain mine.
Chapter eight
Layla
Kissing him isn’t smart. I know this, of course. I don’t dare trust him. I can’t even be certain he’s not one of them. But there are so many factors in play, so many reasons why the taste of him is heaven, and my need for him is everything.
I had cancer.
I don’t have cancer.
I’m a slave to Julian, kept alive by a drug addiction.
And most importantly, I thought Jensen was dead, but he is not.
And so, I sink into the warmth of him, the strength of him that I need so very much, and wrap my arms around his hard body. I trust him beyond reason, and I tell myself it’s because he’s familiar, because he’s a part of my past before all of this happened. None of those reasons are logical reasons to trust, but logic has gotten me nowhere but here.
Right now, there’s just this moment in time with Jensen, with his hand sliding over my waist and my hip. Unbidden, I moan as his palms cup my backside and he lifts me. My legs instinctively wrap his waist, my fingers latching behind his neck. I barely remember him carrying me or how I found myself sitting on the bathroom sink.
I blink.
Bathroom sink?
On some level, I register this as an odd choice of locations, but Jensen’s lips are traveling my jaw and my neck, driving me wild and muting my thoughts outside of those things.
His lips nuzzle my ear, sending shivers down my spine, and he whispers, “Cameras and recording devices.”
I suck in a shocked breath, tense with the implications, but he tilts my mouth to his again, his tongue stroking a long, sensual taste even as his hand slides over my hair. When his lips part from mine, I’m breathless, and he’s sliding open the shower door and turning on the water.
The absence of his touch leaves me shockingly cold. The memory of ICE sliding down my throat is a vivid, bittersweet memory. I can feel the absence of the cancer in my body and how easily I could beg for anything that would keep it away for life when that is not who I am. And it scares me, so very much.
Tension curls in my belly and spreads through my body, my fingers closing around the edges of the vanity beneath me. I’m addicted to ICE, a drug that might have eradicated my cancer, but there is no telling the long-term side effects.
Jensen returns to me, pressing one hand to the vanity beside me, the other cupping my cheek, gently drawing my eyes to his. “We’re getting out of here,” he promises, “but we have to be strategic about how we do it.” He leans in closer, his lips near my ear again, his breath a warm tickle on my neck and lobe. “They need to believe we are doing something other than talking.” He reaches up and turns out the light.
“What are you doing?” I demand, stiffening from the shock of near-complete darkness. Little lights at the baseboard are all that offer my eyes shelter from the depths of the inky room. My hands have landed on his arms, and my fingers curl into my own palms where they rest, resisting him and despising the idea that his kisses have been nothing more than a cover story.