Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
She has the decency to look half guilty.
“I used the opportunity,” she says quietly.
“Same difference.”
I stare at her for a long moment—this woman who keeps finding new ways to make me feel like a fool. Who fucks me like she means it, pockets her orgasm, and then tries to run the second I let my guard down. Who makes me want to break her and protect her in equal measure.
You should have seen this coming, the cold voice whispers. She’s an agent, a spy, an assassin. This is what they do. They lie for a living.
But I didn’t see it coming. Because some utterly pathetic part of me wanted to believe it was real.
“Back to the bed,” I say, releasing her.
She doesn’t move.
“Now, Mia.”
For a second, I think she’s going to fight again. Her body is coiled, ready, those sharp eyes calculating distances and angles. But she must see something in my face that tells her it won’t work—that I’m ready this time, that I won’t be caught off guard again.
She walks back to the bed. Sits on the edge. Doesn’t try to cover herself.
I pull on my pants with jerky, furious movements, not looking at her. My throat aches a little where she hit me. My ribs throb where her elbow connected. She didn’t hold back.
Good, some twisted part of me thinks. At least that was honest.
“This doesn’t happen again,” I say, and I’m not sure if I mean the sex or the escape attempt or any of it. “Whatever you think you can manipulate out of me—it’s not going to work. I’m not that stupid.”
“Clearly you are that stupid.” She gives me cutting smile. “Or I wouldn’t have made it to the door.”
The words hit like a slap.
She’s right. She’s absolutely right. I let my dick do my thinking and she nearly walked out because of it.
“Get some sleep,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say that isn’t me screaming into the void.
“I—”
“No. Fuck you.”
I don’t look back as I close the door and lock it.
I lose time.
That’s the only way to describe it. One moment I’m in the shower, hot water streaming over my skin, and the next I’m standing outside her door with my hand on the knob and no memory of the minutes between.
What the fuck keeps happening?
I blink. Step back. Force myself to walk away from her room. I go and make coffee, check my watch for alerts.
There’s nothing. The city doesn’t need me.
Seems no one does.
The headaches are worse today. I want to say that the stabbing pain behind my eyes is just stress, just tension, just the natural consequence of not sleeping for three days. But there’s something else underneath. A voice. That whisper. Getting louder every hour.
Eliminate the threat.
She knows too much.
I slam my fist into the kitchen counter hard enough to crack the marble.
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.
Integration complete. Awaiting directives.
The headache spikes, white-hot, and for a second I see something—a flash of white walls and surgical lights and the man with a grey mustache looking down at me.
I’m sorry. This wasn’t what I wanted.
Then it’s gone, and I’m just standing in my kitchen with a cracked counter and blood on my knuckles and no idea what’s happening to me.
You’re falling apart, I think. Whatever they did to you—whatever you are—it’s breaking down.
I need answers.
I don’t know how to get them.
I bring her lunch. Ask more questions. Get more silence.
But something’s different now. She looks at me with more concern than anything else.
“You look terrible,” she says when I set the tray down.
“Thanks,” I say with a sigh, because I fucking feel terrible.
“I didn’t think the genetically engineered could look terrible.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“Don’t remember. Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it. Genetically engineered, remember.”
“Nate—”
“Please stop.” I hold up a hand. “Stop calling me Nate. Stop pretending you care. Stop pretending last night meant anything other than…”
“Two people who can’t figure out how to stop wanting each other?” She raises an eyebrow. “That’s exactly what it was. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch you fall apart.”
“I’m not falling apart.”
I’m falling apart.
And the look she gives me says she doesn’t believe it either. She can see it, she can see me unraveling at the seams in real time and she’s the one holding the thread.
“I know there’s something wrong with you. Something more than just—this. Us. The way you’ve been losing time. The headaches. The voice you mutter to when you think I can’t hear.”
I go still. “What voice?”
“I can hear you through the walls sometimes. Telling someone to shut up. Telling them to stop. It’s bloody disturbing.” Her eyes search my face. “Who are you talking to?”
Eliminate the threat.
She’s fishing for intelligence.
Don’t tell her anything.
But something cracks inside me. Some last defense crumbling under the weight of too many sleepless nights and too many questions and the memory of her body beneath mine and the voice in my head that won’t stop whispering.