Her energy buzzes.
Mine… buzzes right back.
“You’re trouble,” I say.
She smiles slow. “Yeah. And?”
“And I’m not adding ‘slept with best friend’s sister while on the run from bounty hunters’ to my list of sins.”
“Yet.”
“Ever,” I snap.
Her grin widens. “You keep saying ‘I’m not touching you’ like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
I am.
Desperately.
I blow out a breath and step back. “Get settled. I’m going to check the perimeter.”
“Translation,” she says. “You’re going outside to growl at trees.”
“Stay inside,” I tell her. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it unless it’s my voice and I say the code word.”
“Code word?”
I think for a second. “Bat.”
She cracks up. “You’re obsessed with my bat.”
“It’s a hazard.”
“It’s a lifestyle.”
I cut myself off before I say something worse and head back down the hall.
Outside, the air is colder. The sky’s bruised-purple, stars just starting to emerge.
I circle the cabin, scanning the tree line, the dirt drive, the ground for any tire tracks that aren’t ours. Nothing. No second set of footprints. No lens glint from the dark.
Maddox was telling the truth. This place is off the grid. On a map, it barely exists.
Good.
We need somewhere quiet.
We need somewhere boring.
We need somewhere no one knows our names.
The problem is, I’m locked in that “somewhere” with the one person on earth who makes me forget how to breathe properly.
I finish the perimeter and head back to the front door. Lark lets me in and I lock the door behind me.
Lark heads to the kitchen, barefoot, and rummages through the cabinets.
She’s taken off her jacket. Her tank top is black, thin, and clinging to places my brain should not be cataloging.
