Ugh. The whole explanation is so douchey. But we need to get out of here, so I duck under Jasper’s arm, fitting it around my shoulders, and press a hand to his chest.
“It’s so... big,” I say on a breathy sigh. Obviously I’m talking about the office, but Leo snorts.
His hand slides from his gun to his belt. “You think that’s impressive, wait until you see?—”
“Okay, time to go,” Jasper says, tugging me past Leo. “Sorry, sweetheart. We’ll have to role-play at home.”
“But baby...” I say, suppressing a different kind of shudder at the whine in my voice. “You said?—”
“Not now.” He bends to kiss me, and I stiffen before I remember I’m supposed to be enjoying this. I hum as I fumble for the elevator button, arching as Jasper pulls me closer. His lips stay closed, but they’re insistent. We are going to kiss until the coast is clear.
So of course Leo rides the elevator down with us. And I spend fifteen floors giggling into Jasper’s neck while he keeps putting his hands places that are barely an inch shy of inappropriate. I guess I could credit his consideration, but I’m too busy fighting the desire to nuzzle in farther and breathe in his scent. It’s adrenaline. Stress. I’m not attracted to Jasper. I can’t be. Especially not in front of his hench buddies. If I’d had any hope that maybe there was some trick—that Jasper wasn’t the henchman he claimed to be—it’s impossible to not let that bubble burst now. Regardless of what Bobby and Leo think about him, they know Jasper. He works for Walter Wolfe, and that means in every timeline but this one, we believe in completely opposite things.
As the elevator finally slows, I breathe a sigh of relief, and Jasper swallows it in one more kiss, muttering something against my mouth that sounds like “almost there,” before he leads me out into the building’s glass and chrome atrium.
“Hey, Leo,” Jasper says, as we arrive at the main doors. “This can stay between us, right? The boss man doesn’t have to know I sneaked up there. I was only hoping to impress my friend here. You know how it goes.”
I risk a glance at Leo, who’s still watching me with his viper gaze. He sneers as our eyes meet. “Sure, Jasper. Your friend. No problem, I won’t say anything. But you owe me a favour.”
“Whatever you want,” Jasper says. “You know I’m good for it.”
Then we’re outside. The air on my face is cool, and my stomach twists with anxiety.
“Don’t run. Don’t run,” Jasper says softly, as I half jog, half stumble over the pavement. I take a deep breath to centre myself, letting my stride settle back into my hips and leaning against Jasper’s body again like I have nowhere else to be.
We dance for a second as I go for the driver’s side before I remember Jasper’s got the wheel here. As soon as the door is closed, I go to slump toward the dash, but not before I hear a “Not yet. Not yet, they’re still watching.”
I sit up again, glancing out the windshield at the CCTV cameras mounted at regular intervals around us.
“Paranoid bastard,” I say.
Jasper laughs. “You did amazing.” He holds out his hand, and I think he means to shake on a job well done, but when I grasp him, he pulls me toward him so he can kiss the back of my hand, before he flips it over and kisses my wrist. Energy crackles along my nerves like lightning, starting where his lips touch my skin and radiating to where my heart is still doing a polka inside my rib cage. When our gazes meet, I feel like I could burst into flames at any second.
Slowly, we pull out of the parking lot. We drive past the guardhouse, where Jasper shouts a cheery goodnight to Bobby like nothing is amiss even as my pulse pounds in my ears.
But as we drive away, resolve steadies my heart. Because we still don’t know about the time machine, and I doubt we’ll have another opportunity to get back into the building. Not tonight, anyway.
“What time is it?” I ask. The clock in this car is with the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, and I can’t see it from this angle.
“Almost eleven, why?”
I take a long slow breath, fighting back anxiety, before I say, “Can you take me home?”
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “But why?”
I stare at my hands in my lap because everything about this is wrong, but if I’ve got all the cards, it’s time to play a few of them.
“Because Indigo will be there.”
To his credit, the BMW jerks violently on the deserted street as Jasper slams his foot on the brake, so at least I know he cares. “What? Why?”
“You know why,” I say.
“I don’t think I do,” he says, though his knuckles tightening on the steering wheel says he’s lying.
Still, it takes me a few tries to get the words out. “Because we have to try again, and the only way to do that is if I die.”
“Try what again?” He still doesn’t sound like he understands.
