This time, Wes was waiting for me in the lobby of the church, his tattooed hand gripping some kind of android phone.
His body straightened and his grip tightened when he saw me. His eyes roamed the length of me, and he swallowed. The humor left his eyes, replaced by something more fiery, intense, nearlyangry, even if that emotion didn’t make sense.
He was in all black, his stubble well-groomed around his sharp jaw. He was lethal yet poised, classy but dangerous.
As I broke free from his spell, the words left my lips before I could stop them. “Why in the shit do you text like that?”
The two new security personnel standing before the closed doors to the nave stopped talking to stare at me, brows raised.
Wes grinned and walked toward me, showing me his compact black phone.
My mouth fell open. It was a tiny flip phone, and when he showed me the keyboard, I realized it was one of those ancient ones where each number was also three letters.
“Ohhh,”I breathed.
Damnit. How had Wes turned the biggest ick into something bizarrely sexy in two seconds flat?
“Had to relearn how to type on one of these bad boys, but it’s quite onerous. I’d prefer a call,” he said. “Unless talking to someone on the phone would shatter your fragile Zoomer mind.” Wes lifted a hand to my face, gently stroking the side of my head in a way that made me shudder.
My mind melted and my body stilled, entirely beyond my control. Wes pulled his hand away with a frown, and I wondered if he was going to apologize for touching me again.
But he didn’t. He looked at me like he was waiting for something.
Oh, shit.He was waiting for my turn in our generational sparring match.
“I like calls,” I said lamely, internally kicking myself.Lock in. This is war.“Has anyone ever told you how weird you are?”
Wes smirked. “Of course.”
Yeah, that was the best I had. It was embarrassing.
“So… no social media?”
“No.”
“No ChatGPT?”
Wes scoffed. “Fuck no.”
I was about to ask,no dating apps?but the answer was obvious. Wes’s existence sounded terrifying, but also… liberating.
The door behind me opened and closed, and the security personnel pushed open the entrance to the nave. I realized in horror that guests were arriving and gathering inside, standing around chatting or sitting in the pews.
There was no more time to analyze Wes’s dedication to the twentieth century, because I was about to give a goddamnsermon.
After giving the men our names, tonight’s password, and our phones, I grabbed Wes’s arm and pulled him inside the nave, into a back corner away from the growing crowd. I spotted Archer and Jayne near the front, with Maisy trailing Jayne around like her shadow.
“What if the hypnosis doesn’t take?” I asked, somehow only just now conceiving of this roadblock. My heart was already pounding, my palms slick. “I’m skeptical and sharp, like the dog with superintelligence. I doubt my mind will be so easy to subdue.”
Wes slowly grinned. “While I do not doubt you’re a very good girl…” he teased.
I tripped over my next breath. He was making a dog joke, but my body didn’t quite understand that.
“…nor do I doubt your mental agility, but your anxiety is going to put you in an altered headspace, and I am confident in my abilities to take you the rest of the way there.”
Nothing about Wes wavered. We were standing close—too close. He towered over me even when I wore heels, eclipsing me in both height and lean muscle. He lowered his head closer to mine.
For the most delusional moment, I wondered if he was going to kiss me.
