“Text me. Any time. About anything. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning and you can’t sleep. Text me.”
“Okay.”
“And Marco?” He leaned in and kissed me softly. “Don’t let Boucher get in your head. He’s trying to scare us. Don’t let him win.”
“I’ll try.”
We had an hour before he had to leave. An hour to store up closeness for the week ahead.
He caught my gaze, and understanding passed between us without words. We reached for each other at the same moment, clothes disappearing in a tangle of urgency. We spent the next half hour lost in each other, devouring each other with hands and mouths. It was more carnal this morning. More urgent. More desperate.
Like we were trying to prove something. To ourselves, to each other, to whatever forces were conspiring against us.
When I moved down his body and took him in my mouth, his hands tangled in my hair and he said my name like a prayer.
And when he returned the favor, the intensity of my orgasm nearly broke me.
He shifted and lay on top of me, chest to cock, his forearms taking his weight. Both of us were breathing hard, not wanting to acknowledge that time was running out.
“When I get back?—”
“We’ll figure it out,” I finished. “We’ll figure out how to do this when I’m back at the facility. When we can’t hide in here anymore.”
“Together,” he insisted.
“Together,” I agreed, even though I had no idea how.
He left, and I stood at the door watching him drive away until his Jeep disappeared around the corner.
As I clomped back upstairs to the bed that still smelled like him, to the house that felt empty without him, I knew one thing for certain.
I’d rather have Étienne and face the consequences than go back to the half life I’d been living before him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Étienne
The hotel room in D.C. was wrong.
Not broken or damaged or poorly furnished—just wrong. The bed was too big, too empty, too cold. The silence felt oppressive instead of peaceful. Even the air felt different, lacking the familiar comfort of home.
Of Marco.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, knowing I should sleep. We had practice in the morning, then a game tomorrow night. My body needed rest.
But my mind wouldn’t quiet down.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand: 2:36 a.m., which made it 12:36 a.m. at home in Centennial. Ridiculous to text him this late.
I texted anyway.
Étienne
Can’t sleep
The response came withinseconds.
Marco
