Fair enough. Resting my elbows on the table, I hid my face in my hands.This is the world I live in.
“I have something for you,” he said.
Something for me? Was that some sort of innuendo?
He tossed me a plastic square I barely caught.
“A pager?” I asked.
He nodded toward it. “It still works.”
Right. But what was I supposed to do with it?
“Do you know how they work?” he asked.
“No.”
His gaze darted over me again, studying. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” I snapped. “What’s with the judgy tone? How old areyou?”
He rubbed his face like talking to me tried every strand of patience inside him. “It’s set to vibrate. If I need you, it’ll vibrate and a message will display telling you when to meet me.”
“What if I’m busy?”
“You’re never too busy for me.”
Rolling my eyes, I asked, “What if I needyou?” I tried to imagine a situation in which I would need this man. No such scenario presented itself.
He stood. “Follow me.”
For one puzzling moment, I thought he might offer his hand to help me, but then he merely turned and left. I trailed him through the house until he reached the master bedroom. My eyes fell on the bed, and I froze.
Wait. He said he wasn’t interested.
Fear crashed through me in a tidal wave.
I knew… I hadknownthis would happen. So why couldn’t I breathe?
He glanced back at me and followed my gaze to the bed. Heaving a sigh, he grabbed my elbow with enough force to jerk me forward and drag me through the closet door. “If I want to fuck you, I’ll make it obvious.”
I shot him a distrustful scowl. “How obvious?”
If he answered, I didn’t hear it. I was distracted by the wonders behind the door. He’d converted a walk-in closet into a communications room. Monitors sat on the shelves, screens displaying live feeds of various locations. Radio devices and books littered the shelves, and every spare surface was covered in wires, circuit boards, and parts I didn’t even recognize.
My gaze darted everywhere as I entered. Communication was such a difficult dilemma for the Defiance. Many cell towers had been destroyed, and satellite phones were hard to find. Overhead telephone lines were razed at an increasing rate. The internet was nonexistent.
The NAO didn’t struggle like we did, so Lucas likely had no idea how magical this room seemed to me. He directed my attention to a square lamp in one corner, glowing with a soft white light. I approached it, and he pointed to a set of buttons at the base. “It has a sister at my house. If you change the color on this one, it’ll change the color on mine. I’ve made a color key.”
He pointed to a piece of paper pinned to the wall above the lamp. Blue forNon-urgent message. Yellow forUrgent message. Green forI couldn’t stay. Purple forI’m waiting. Orange forOn my way. And red forEmergency. I need you now.
“I suggest not using red unless you’re dying,” he said.
“Can you change the color from yours?”
“Yes.”
I exhaled a slow breath, bracing myself against a sudden wave of vertigo. This was real. We were doing this, weren’t we? I was his now, at his beck and call, for better or worse.
