Page 105 of Powerless

My answer is agonizingly slow as I slide closer to him.

It’s more than okay.

Eagerness is an emotion I’ve always been able to blame on circumstance, and I wish desperately it wasn’t desire driving my decisions.

I hear him take a breath, only realizing then that he had been holding it.

And then all remanence of hesitation is gone.

His hand settles on the far side of my waist where my tank is slowly beginning to slide up. He’s wasted no time pulling me against him, allowing me to feel the rise and fall of his chest, feel the steady beat of his heart pounding against my back.

“Tell me, doesthisannoy you?” he asks quietly, breathing the question close to my ear. He’s throwing my words back at me, and I can almost feel him smirking. Hewantsthis to annoy me. Wants this to get under my skin and make me flustered with every finger he has on my body.

Bastard.

I simply can’t allow that. So, I say with a confidence I don’t currently feel, “Not at all. I can’t be bothered, Azer.”

“Good,” he says coolly. Then he lays his head on my arm and shoulder, his soft, inky hair tickling my skin. “Who needs a pillow when I have you?”

I huff with what I hope sounds like annoyance. Thanks to him, I’m now suddenly wide awake and unable to focus on anything else but the heat of his body against mine. He finally drops his head from my shoulder and lays it close to the back of mine, practically buried in my hair.

“Sweet dreams, Pae.”

“Sweet dreams, Kai.”

His hand tightens ever so slightly on my waist in response to the sound of his name rolling off my tongue. And then his thumb is brushing lazy, light strokes over the fabric of my thin tank. I suppress a shiver, swallow, and shut my eyes.

Just go to sleep.

Easier said than done.

I’m far too focused on his sweeping thumb, his arm wrapped tightly around me, his chest rising and falling against my back.

I hate that Idon’thate it.

And that’s when it hits me.

Distraction.

He’s doing it again. He’s taking my mind off the death I just witnessed, off the fact that I watched him kill someone because they were going to kill me. He’s the only thing keeping my thoughts from Sadie’s dead body, the only thing that will chase the nightmares away for tonight because I’m too occupied with the thought ofhim.

And this is a distraction that benefits the both of us.

I find myself smiling as I think about the calculating boy behind me.

The calculating boy, who for some reason,cares.

ChapterThirty-One

Kai

we spendour final day in the whispers trying to get out. It was late afternoon when a Sight interrupted our routine of eating stringy rabbit together. The girl was young and timid, only managing to drop a folded piece of parchment onto a nearby stump before she vanished into the forest.

The note, to no surprise, was incredibly cryptic. It offered no details, only informing us that we are to meet at the edge of the Whispers at sunrise.

So, after climbing another Plague-forsaken pine tree to see which direction to head in, we set off trudging through the forest. And after several long hours of this, we’ve grown restless, to say the least.

I hear Paedyn swear, stumbling behind me. “These damn snakes!” I turn around in time to see her flip the dagger in her hand, holding it by its blade before effortlessly sending it flying into the head of a snake slithering by her feet. The hissing dies along with the rest of the creature before Paedyn casually tugs the blade out of its skull.

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