"They found us," she said. The vibration in her voice wasn't fear; it was fury. "We’ve been here twenty-four hours. How did they find us?"
"You lit a signal fire," I said, turning to face her in the dark. "You broke the internet, Rowan. People are looking."
I could feel her trembling. Not the shivering of a cold person, but the structural shaking of a machine redlining. She was terrified, but she was trying to convert it into data. She was trying tosolvebeing hunted.
"I need to move," she said, taking a step back toward the desk. "If they know we're here, the data could be compromised. I have to reroute the?—"
I reached out.
I caught her arm. She was solid muscle and tension under the soft cotton of the hoodie.
"Stop," I said.
"I can't stop," she snapped, trying to wrench free. "If I stop, they win. If I stop, I'm just a Beta waiting to be collected. I have to work, Mateo. I have to make it expensive for them to come through that door."
"You're vibrating."
"I am processing!"
"You're crashing."
I pulled her in. She hit my chest with a soft thud. She tried to push away, her hands flat against my t-shirt, pushing against the wall of me.
"Let go," she hissed. "I have protocols to run."
"Fuck the protocols."
I backed her up until her hips hit the edge of the heavy oak desk. She gasped, trapped between the wood and my body. I didn't crush her. I just removed the space she was using to hide from herself.
"Mateo," she warned, her voice breathless. "This is not in the contract."
"Then sue me."
I reached up. My hand was large, rough, and scarred from a decade of violence, but I cupped her jaw nonetheless. My thumb brushed her cheekbone. Her skin was burning hot.
She froze. The frantic energy didn't leave, but it changed frequency. It stopped being about the files and started being about the heat in the room.
I leaned down. I was a mountain looming over a fault line.
"You're trying to outrun a bullet, Rowan," I murmured, my face inches from hers. "You can’t paperwork your way out of this feeling."
"I don't... I don't know what you mean."
"The adrenaline," I said. "It's eating you alive. You're looking for a fight in that laptop because you're scared to feel what's happening in your body."
I stroked my thumb over her lower lip. She shuddered, her breath hitching.
"I'm offering you a different fight," I whispered.
Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing the hazel. I could smell the shift in her scent. The chemical tang of anxiety was fading, replaced by something heavier. Something sweeter and wetter.
"Mateo," she breathed.
"Tell me no," I said.
I held her gaze. I put the weapon in her hand. I gave her the power of the veto, the one thing she thought she’d lost when the world turned on her.
"Tell me to back off," I rumbled. "Tell me this isn't professional. Tell me to go guard the door."
