“You okay?”
“Just a little queasy. You know how it is.” Food is a double edged sword these days. We need it but our bodies don’t always like what we put in it. “The wine may have been a little much,” I confess.
He approaches me and rests a hand on my hip. Without asking he gives me a kiss, gentle and smooth. I’ve barely adjusted to it when he pulls away, licking his lips. “Tastes good to me.”
He lifts me up, setting me on the counter so we’re eye to eye. I run my fingers over his jaw, the scruff of his beard. My heart hammers in my chest. Without reason I blurt, “Green thinks Cole, and possibly Chloe, set you up.”
There’s a beat—I’ve ruined this pleasant moment and I desperately want to take the words back. Wyatt runs his hands up my thighs and just says, “I’m aware.”
I want to ask how he knows but at the same time, nope, not going there or fighting about that now. “You think he’s wrong?”
“I think we’ll find out soon enough.”
There’s a sound at the back door and we pause, hands off one another and on our weapons. He’s tense standing between my legs. My heartbeat quickens from possible danger—from outside and his closeness.
“Probably the horses,” he whispers, when there’s no other sound. He focuses his intense eyes back on me. “Green may be right. Cole may have known I’d come up here at the drop of a hat. That doesn’t change his motivation one way or the other. He’s not with them, at least not willingly. If the Hybrids are coming I’m just going to say a little extra prayer of thanks I got to spend time with you.”
He rests his gun on the counter and with two hands pulls my hips closer to the edge. Out the kitchen window daybreak starts, its early morning ascent providing a glow across Wyatt’s face.
“You’re doing a number on me, aren’t you?”
He cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
“Saying things like that. Touching me like this.” I rest my hand on his chest and look into his eyes. He watches me closely and I lean forward, kissing him. Want rushes through me and I tug gently on his bottom lip. When we part I add, “Kissing me like that.”
“I think you’re the one doing those things.” He loops a piece of hair over my ear. The tension ratchets up a notch.
“What is this, Wyatt?” I ask the question I know he can’t answer because I’m the girl that wants to know everything.
He’s smart. I’ve always known that and it’s confirmed when he cups the back of my neck and kisses me again instead of answering. This time he isn’t gentle. It’s full of energy, something I feel all the way down to my toes. I’m not used to him yet—not the way he handles me or the way he moves. Not the way he makes the earth feel like it’s shuddering under my feet.
Against my mouth, in the quietest of voices, he says, “This is now. It’s real, and you remember that no matter what happens. No matter what Chloe says or does, you understand that?” I nod and he continues. “She’ll try to wedge between us. She’ll use us to hurt one another. Look what she did to her brother. Always know this is real and it has been since the moment I met you.”
“Definitely a number,” I mumble, feeling overheated and woozy with emotion.
We kiss again, hands growing greedy, desperate. His mouth doesn’t leave mine even when I need to catch my breath, and the burn in the pit of my stomach makes my brain evaporate from my head.
I hear a faint scratch at the back door, followed by a low moan. I freeze, squeezing his hand with mine. “That’s not the horses,” I whisper.
Wyatt steps away, checking his gun. I jump off the counter, hatchet already in hand. The laughter and chatter from the front room comes to an abrupt stop, just as Wyatt opens the back door.
He had his gun pointed head level but drops it suddenly, aiming at the ground. Shouts call from the front room—something is wrong in there—but I’m screaming, “Don’t shoot!” realizing it’s Jude’s bloody body on the porch floor.
Boots pound through the house, furniture crashes. I’m on my knees trying to help my friend. Wyatt steps over me, heading into the early morning fog.
“Get up,” he hisses at me but I don’t want to leave him.
“Run!” Mary Ellen screams from the front of the house. I’ve found Jude’s pulse—his face barely recognizable from the beating. “Alex! Run!” she yells again from the front room and I stand, looking back to the living room and out the front door—mind bent and confused.
Gunshots come from the front room, glass shatters and breaks. I can’t help them from inside, so I run through the back door and down the back steps.
“You’re not getting away from me this time,” hear from the kitchen doorway. “Neither of you.”
I spin at the familiar voice. Chloe stands with her hands on her hips. Her hair has completely grown out since her surgery last year. The same pale blonde as her brother’s. She nods and the echoing sound of cocked and ready rifles clicks against the silent yard. A quick glance reveals I’m surrounded.
“Drop your weapon,” a drone says. I throw it at his head. He ducks but the one behind him doesn’t and it clips him across the ear. A string of profanity rolls off his tongue, blood gushing through his fingers as he clutches his head. A dozen guns come within a foot and I consider that this may be it. This is how I’ll go down, when I hear a cry to my right and a Hybrid shoves Jane my direction. She stumbles and I catch her, noticing the blood dripping from her temple.
“Tie the others up. We’ll take them back to headquarters,” Chloe commands and her Hybrid ants scurry to fulfill her wishes. She shifts her focus on me and Jane. “And tie them up.”