I can tell she doesn’t believe me when her expression doesn’t change.
“Is it the mayor? Did you see who it was?”
“I didn’t see anyone. It could have been him, though,” I say vaguely.
It wasn’t him. The mayor has had plenty of time to take potshots at us anytime we left the Gabriel Mansion. He wants what Nash has. He doesn’t want Nash dead because there’s no guarantee that Nash hasn’t willed his fortune to someone else, and that Otto, Nash’s attorney, doesn’t have a copy of that will.
This isn’t the mayor. Whoever was taking potshots wasn’t aiming atme.
They were aiming at Byrdie, and I can only think of one person who would want her dead.
“It was Jeremiah.” Panicked, her breath starts to race. “Wasn’t it?”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes, we do.” Her eyes slide past me, up to the road I rolled us down, and to a danger that could be lurking up there. “I have to go.”
“Don’t be stupid. Go where?” I snap at her, her panic pissing me off because there’s nothing I can do to silence it.
Nothing I say is making her feel any safer, and it’s making me feel so useless.
“He was asking about you,” she whispers, staring up at a danger she can’t see. “When he brought me back to the compound, he asked about the men I was living with, and I knew he would kill you if he could.”
“No one is going to?—”
I grunt as she tries to wiggle out from under me.
“Stop!”
“I have to go up there or he will kill you.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Stopwriggling.”
“He’ll kill you if he finds me with you. I should just?—”
I kiss her.
Her panic is only growing. Talking isn’t working. Arguing is doing less than nothing. So I fucking kiss her and hope she doesn’t knee me in the balls.
But she’s frozen, and her eyes, wide with shock as she stares up at me, slowly close when I angle my head. Her lips are soft, her breath sweet and slightly tart from the strawberries she had with the pancakes Nance made for breakfast. I frame her beautiful face as I deepen the kiss.
Her soft, breathy moan breaks something inside me.
Nope. Not the moan. It’s when she arches under me, her body needy and hungry.
Fuck.
As I lift the bottom half of my body from hers, I take far too much pleasure in her soft whimper of complaint. I shove her sweatpants down, fight with my pants, and nearly have a painful accident involving my balls when I don’t take as much care with my zipper as I should.
But it’s down, my pants undone. I test her wetness with one finger and curse again at how tight and wet she is. Her body stretches around me, trying to hold me inside her. Damn. I won’t last long inside her.
Pulling my finger out of her, I brace myself over her for a hard and fast ride. “Legs around me,” I order her in an urgent whisper.
I have one coherent thought before I slide inside her: Vonn is going to fucking kill me for doing this here.
The thought is…exciting.
More exciting than it has a right to be.
