Page 119

“You’re so cold,” she murmurs. “I need to warm you up.”

My cock hasn’t figured out how to not get hard whenever she touches me, and it’s tenting the covers. She runs her fingers up and down it and I groan.

“You don’t have to,” I say. “I was dying to eat your pussy from the time I woke up. It’s not a tit for tat.”

“I never do anything I don’t want to do,” she says.

She cups my balls, making me practically howl. They’re sensitive, and she loves getting a rise out of me.

I’ve figured out how to keep myself from coming until she does when we’re fucking. But when she puts her hands or mouth on me, it’s hard to last.

She runs her fingertips over my thigh, her touch featherlight. I close my eyes and groan, because I like this almost as much as sex.

“I didn’t have this with Donovan,” she says softly. “I’ve never had this with anyone.”

“Neither have I.”

“Is it weird for you when I mention him while I’m in bed with you?”

“No. You can tell me anything.”

She grazes her fingertips over my hip and I shiver in the best way.

“Just this,” I say. “Keep doing that and talk to me. I love it.”

“After we left the Deadmen, I wanted to want Donovan again. But I was different. I realized I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly wanted him.” She sighs. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I got off, and I didn’t hate the sex. But by the time I decided to leave, I couldn’t bear for him to touch me.”

I tighten my hold on her slightly, my hand tingling with the urge to have a gun in it. “He did it anyway?”

“No. For a while, I didn’t say anything. I thought ... well, what I thought was wrong. I told him before we left that I wasn’t sure I’d ever want him that way again. And I didn’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you sound guilty when you say it?”

She acknowledges that with a hum, her fingertips grazing over my chest now.

“I guess because he never stopped wanting me. I loved him, just not in that way. And when it was just the two of us, running so hard every day could have been our last on Earth, he would look at me like he was dying and only I could save him. And I told him—without telling him—that I’d rather have no one than him.”

“It’s hard for me to sympathize with him, knowing what he’s done.”

“I get that. He saved my life, though.”

“It’s just basic human decency for a man to stop a woman from being sexually assaulted. Doesn’t make him a hero.”

She’s silent for a few seconds before saying, “Not just then. On the day the Deadmen caught up to us and cornered us in a market.”

When she goes quiet, I murmur, “You don’t have to say more.”

“One of them was about to shoot me. He jumped in front of me and told me to run. I knew I couldn’t outrun them. The Deadmen close in on their prey from every direction. So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran as hard as I could, right at a bunch of New America soldiers. I told them my birth control supplier was after me because I hadn’t paid him. They arrested both of us.”

She’s strong in every way, but her mind blows me away. Making that calculation when someone is trying to kill you takes nerves of steel.

“That’s why they branded your hands.”

“Yep.”