"I promise," she whispers.
"Good." I step back, the loss of contact leaving me cold. "Keep it on you. Even when you sleep. Especially when you sleep."
I turn away to check the window, gripping the iron spike firmly in my pocket, praying to a God I haven't spoken to in years that she never has to use it.
13
MIRANDA
The passage of time is blurring. Yesterday was a blur of adrenaline and terror. Someone, or something, tested the door handle at three in the morning. Just a rattle. A vibration of metal against metal that woke me from a dead sleep. I spent the rest of the night curled up in the nest with Jax, his arm heavy over my waist, his body a solid wall between me and the door. I didn't sleep, but I didn't shake, either.
Today, the terror has been replaced by a suffocating, wet heat.
Heat is an energy transfer. It moves from a hotter object to a cooler one until thermal equilibrium is reached.
The air conditioner—a rusty window unit that sounded like a lawnmower choking on gravel—died three hours ago. It gave a final, rattling gasp and seized up. Since then, the cabin has transformed from a shelter into a kiln.
I am sitting on the floorboards with my back against the wall, legs spread wide in a desperate attempt to ventilate. I’ve shed the oversized flannel. I’m down to a ribbed white tank top and my underwear. The sweat pools in the hollow of my throat and slides down between my breasts in a slow, maddening trickle.
My hair is piled on top of my head, held in place by a pencil I found in the junk drawer. Damp tendrils escape, sticking to my neck like wet cobwebs.
"It’s ninety-eight degrees," I announce to the room. "Humidity is near saturation. We are essentially steaming like dumplings."
Jax doesn't look up.
He’s sitting at the table, cleaning his gun. He’s shirtless, of course. He’s been shirtless for three days, a fact that my logical brain is trying to categorize as 'tactical' and my lizard brain is categorizing as 'problematic.' His skin gleams with sweat, highlighting every ridge of muscle, every scar, every vein that traverses his biceps like a roadmap.
He moves with a terrifying economy of motion.Click. Slide. Snap.He disassembles the mechanism, wipes it down with an oily rag, and reassembles it blind.
He’s agitated. I can feel it. The atmosphere in the cabin is thick, charged with a static tension that has little to do with the storm outside. It’s the proximity. We are two animals trapped in a cage that is getting smaller by the hour.
He tracks me. If I walk to the sink, his eyes follow. If I stretch, I hear his breath hitch. It’s a heavy, predatory weight that rests on my shoulders.
"Stop fidgeting," he growls, though I haven't moved in ten minutes.
"I’m not fidgeting. I’m ventilating." I fan myself with a piece of stiff cardboard torn from a cereal box. "Can't we fix the AC? We fixed the generator."
"Compressor's blown," he says, racking the slide of the pistol.Clack-clack."Piston seized. Need a new part. Can't get parts when there’s a sniper watching the driveway."
He sets the gun down and finally looks at me.
His eyes are dark, the amber swirling with something thick and heavy. He looks at my bare legs. He looks at the damp spot on my tank top where the sweat has soaked through.
Then his gaze locks onto my neck. Onto the starburst birthmark right on my throat.
His nostrils flare.
"You smell," he says.
"Excuse me?" I bristle, pulling my knees up slightly. "I smell like Dove soap and desperation. You’re the one who smells like a wet animal."
"You smell like heat," he corrects. His voice drops, rough and low. "Like burnt sugar. It’s... loud."
He stands up.
The sudden movement sucks the oxygen out of the room. He walks toward me. He doesn't walk like a man; he prowls. Heavy footsteps. Fluid hips. He stops right in front of me, looming, casting a long shadow that swallows me whole.
He reaches into his pocket.
