I bristle. “Well, try.”
The moment poofs away. Any red on his face from embarrassment turns to ire, and his jaw clamps shut, working back and forth.
I didn’t mean for it to come out so rude. But the whiplash in the last hour alone is enough to have me seeing a chiropractor for weeks. Every emotion—terror, humiliation, anger … desire. I blow a curl out of my face.
“Miss Thea, here.” Edmond extends his arm out of the limo and offers me a bottle of water.
I take it. “Thank you.” Then, my eyes dart to Slade as I crack the top. “And thank you. I’m sorry, I just …”
He blinks and turns his back on me, ducking through the backseat door. I’m left holding my water bottle on the side of this—I glance around—deserted back road somewhere outside the city. A crooked sign leans into the road, and its sun-bleached letters read LAKE MICHIGAN KEEP RIGHT, and when the chirr of summer insects becomes too much, I climb in after him.
What does he want from me? I’m not a toy, some plaything he can use to manipulate this society he belongs to. If he truly wanted to help, he’d getallthe girls out. What is it about me?
I barely have time to shut the door before Slade pounds the side of the limo again and it pulls back onto the road. The limo glides through the night, catching the glow of passing streetlights and headlights. Through the tinted windows, the distant city lights twinkle and dance into a blur that thins out. We hum along while Edmond smiles, Slade rubs his palms over his widespread thighs, and I stare out into the void.
“You need to learn how to dance.” Slade’s voice breaks through in a spectacular, gritty husk that instantly has me turning to him. He holds my unblinking stare as my mouth pops open. I need to learn how to … Is he serious? “The Culling. They’ll have it again, and again.”
“Well … that’s just … great.” It’s unbelievable. No one would believe me. In passing, we hear about one-off politicians having a drug addiction or doing something shady. You might even have a government-contracted businessman selling classified secrets. But the idea that this sort of conversation is normal within this circle of men, in this society—and that’s his solution? Learn how to dance? Icandance. Just not when I have hundreds of sleezy men ogling me from their pretentious leather seats as they puff their cigars and guzzle their top-shelf liquor.
At least he told me, which is a feat in itself because he wasn’t talking.
“Pull through as close as possible to the door, Paul.” Edmond’s voice bounces off the rolling limo as it turns onto the lake house drive. He turns to Slade. “Can’t be too careful.”
Slade nods.
I ponder the congressman’s voice, the delicious, smooth, rich texture of it, layered with a gravelly rasp. I’m curious if that is his voice, or if that part will wear off. How difficult is it not speaking when his job and extracurriculars seem to demand it? “Why don’t you speak?”
Slade tilts his head to study me, eyes tracing somewhere around my face. My nose itches, and I want to scratch it, but he’s staring, and I don’t know what it is about that piercing look, but it makes my skin buzz. An odd sensation of uncomfortable and spark.
“Something in me learned silence was safer,” he finally says.
“But why speak to me then?”
He presses his tongue to his back molar and then pushes his frames up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger.
“We’re here. Let’s move quickly. We don’t know how many members you’ve upset tonight with your antics.” The limo barely stops before Edmond is pulling on the handle and ushering us all out. Security men meet us and escort us to the doors.
The mineral tang of the lake is faint, along with the lapping of water around the other face of the house, but it settles me. Calms me. And yet, my hands can’t unclench. Staying away, hidden away, feels like another passive dismissal, an uncertain future like before. And maybe, just maybe, I’m done with that. I’m safe for now, but safety isn’t enough. I want more than that. I want this to end.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SLADE
An hour ago …
Watching Thea disappear around the corner with Knox sends a visceral sense of fury through me.
“Did you just …”The shock, the surprise in her voice when I unintentionally spoke to her. When something in my body decided to unlock and allow the words to come. Drunk off her scent, off the tiny hairs reacting to my breath along her neck … I didn’t know what was happening to me,what’shappening to me. The question slipped past my lips.
Her ragged breaths, responsive, made my head spin, and when she repeated them—obsessed. Those soft sounds could make a man obsessed. She didn’t push me away.
I want …
Bad things.
Yet, I also want her to hear me, and I haven’t wanted that in nearly four years.
The sound of boots gets closer, and two security guards round the corner. “Congressman. Senator Graves would like to see you in the Sovereign Chamber.”
