“He burns it all down,” she finished, no fear in her voice.
I wanted to say I wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, I sat down beside her, the hotel sheets cold even through my jeans. “We need to get ahead of him,” I said. “If Smith thinks you’re stalling, it’s over.”
“Then I don’t stall,” she said. “I play along. I fix their protocol just enough to get a look at everything. And then… we sabotage it.”
She was already in motion, her brain mapping out the angles, the hacks, the ways to break the system from the inside. I watched her and I ached: for the kid I’d been, thinking I’d never be outwitted, for the woman in front of me, always a step ahead and still so easy to hurt.
“Come here,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes narrow. “What…what are you thinking about?”
Her, always her. The way she’d mapped the future onto her own bones, how she could look at a monster and see the code beneaththe skin. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her I’d trade every scam and every dollar for five more minutes sitting here, watching her unspool a plan with murder in her heart.
“I’m thinking that…look, obviously, you understand your research is valuable. It’s the reason I’m in your life, right?”
I wanted to say, out loud, something corny and dangerous—that I’d give it all back if it meant we could just be normal people, not marks or predators or the jagged things that happened in between. But my mouth wouldn’t budge. I’d been taught not to say the soft shit unless I was sure it was safe, and nothing was safe anymore.
Instead I picked up her hand and turned it over, studied the tiny scars along her knuckles from all those years pipetting and scribbling, the one malformed cuticle from when she’d caught her thumb in a freezer hinge back in Stanford. “You’re not disposable,” I said, my voice gone thick. “You know that, right? And I don’t care about BioHQ, or the Morettis, or the science itself as long as I have you. And as long as you’re safe.”
Jade stared at me. Just stared, which was rare for her—usually her brain was burning off layers of atmosphere so fast I had to fight to keep up. Now she was just there, the gears stopped, or maybe spinning fast enough to look still.
She squeezed my fingers, the kind of grip that said she was about to run out of blood before she let go. “We’re not going to make it out of this, are we?” she said. “Not really.”
I wanted to lie, but not to her. “Probably not. You don’t make it out of my family.”
She let go of my hand and dropped her head onto my shoulder, just for a second. The weight of it landed like a verdict, and I felt something in my chest flicker. Maybe it was grief for what I already knew would happen, or maybe it was just the cold certainty that history was about to repeat, and I was out of time to change it.
“I’ll make it hurt,” Jade said, her voice a half-laugh. “I promise.”
She tilted her head up to look at me and I pressed my lips against hers. “I’ll make you forget,” I said. “Just for tonight.”
I kissed her deep. She opened her mouth to let me in, and I felt her arms circle my back, her tongue darting over my teeth. She was all fire and salt, and when she broke the kiss she scraped her nails behind my ear, like she was hanging on for life.
“I’m going to fuck you slowly tonight,” I said. “I want to feel your pussy clench around me as you come.”
She gave me a wolfish smile, the kind that didn’t reach her eyes, but she let me tug her across the bed, her knees bracketing my hips. “That’s not slow,” she said, but she rocked back anyway, grinding the length of my cock between her thighs. “That’s—” she started, but I cut her off, hooking my hand behind her head and pulling her down to kiss me.
She was so wet already, her cunt slick against my stomach, the heat of her need so obvious it made me dizzy. I dragged my fingers along her ass, squeezing, then slid two between her legs and curled them up inside. She shuddered, bit at my lip, then laughed in my mouth.
“What I should have said was I’m going to fuck you all night,” I replied. “I make no promises about speed.”
My fingers worked her, hooked and searching for her g-spot while I thumbed her clit.
She was soaked, her pussy gloving my fingers to the knuckle, and when I hit the spot inside, she shivered like I’d thrown a switch.
“You ever think about what we’d be doing if we weren’t here?” she said, voice fuzzy with want.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I’d be fucking you in the world’s most expensive bed, with no one trying to kill us after.”
She snorted, then gasped as I twisted my wrist and started flicking her clit with my thumb. She rocked against my hand, using the leverage of her knees to ride my fingers, and I watched her face—eyes half-closed, lips parted, the flush climbing her neck. She never looked more alive than when she was seconds from coming apart.
I pulled my fingers out, painted the slick on my cock, and lined it up. “You ready?” I asked, low, looking at her.
I knew she was ready. I knew she wanted me.
I just wanted to make her wait.
She bit my jaw, hard enough to leave a mark, and then I was inside, slow and deep, every inch. She flexed around me, greedy, and I had to clench my jaw to keep from blowing instantly. I started slow, grinding up into her with long, even strokes, letting her set the pace. Her hips rolled, a little off-beat at first, thenfinding their rhythm. Every time I bottomed out, she dug her nails into my biceps like she was warning me not to stop.
