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“Be a good girl and grab that for me, would you, love?”
I closed the sack of money and phones into one fist and took the ice cream with the other.
“Everybody stays down until that clock over there strikes six. If you get up, you die. If you call the police,shedies.”
“The girl!” The cook called from the kitchen as Rook began dragging me backward to the door. “You said you’d let her go.”
“Did I?” Rook asked. “Hmm. Don’t think I did.”
“Please!” I begged. “Please let me go!”
“If these good people here forget what they saw, you’ll get your freedom.”
“Please,” I croaked, my plea meant for the patrons in the diner now as Rook hauled me out the door and around the side of the building.
Once we were out of sight of the windows, his arm around me dropped and I let out a small laugh, unable to hold it in for another second.
“That was the most—”
He ripped his mask off with one hand as he shoved me with the other, my back hitting the rough wall behind us. His lips parted as he stared openly at me, his dark eyes darting between my light ones. Trying to find something in their depths.
“Rook?”
I barely got his name out before he stole it from my lips with a brutal kiss that tore through every inch of my body like a shockwave. I gasped against his mouth as a sensation that bordered on pain twisted like a knife in my belly. The butterflies there turning to iron, their edges sharper than honed steel.
Rook’s tongue slipped between my lips, and I let him take me. Lost in the feel of him as his hands gripped me roughly, fingers pushing into flesh like hot branding irons.
When his lips left mine, I blinked through a dizzy haze, unable to breathe.
His fingers gripped my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. “You did good, Ghost.”
“What?” I breathed, struggling to focus.
“You just passed your first trial.”
“Is that…?”Grey trailed off as Rook emerged into the back lot of the diner, dragging Ava Jade along by her wrist. Both of them grinning like fools as ice cream dripped down Ava Jade’s fingers, all the way down to her elbow, and a heavy sack swayed in Rook’s fist.
They rushed for the Rover, faces flushed and eyes bright.
Fuck.
“Start the car!” Rook called before they were even inside, hurriedly tearing open the back door to help Ava Jade into the backseat before slipping in himself.
“I saidgo,man,” he repeated, giving Grey’s arm a shove. “Unless you want us all to be ID’d and arrested.”
Sparrow laughed, leaning back in her seat with stars in her eyes as she caught her breath. I’d never seen her like that, and something within me pulled, straining against the confines I’d set for myself as a boy.
“What the fuck did you do?” I growled as Grey started the ignition.
“Forward, brother,” Rook said when Grey tried to put the Rover in reverse.
“But—”
“Just do it, we don’t need them seeing the Rover.”
Grey muttered something to himself but did what Rook demanded, driving over the cement barrier and out onto the hard-packed dirt of the desert terrain. He’d find a way to avoid the road for as long as he could before slipping back onto it.
“What. Did. You. Do?” I asked again, whirling in my seat as the Rover bumped over uneven ground.
