Page 94 of Forged in Deception

Immediately, Asher could imagine the wheels turning.

“I’m confused. You’re a small guy. It shouldn’t have been difficult for her to figure out a large enough dose to put you to sleep. The real danger should have been giving you too much and accidentally killing you. Hmm.”

Asher opened his mouth to tell her just what he thought of her calling him ‘small,’ but a second later, her eyes lit up.

“Wait. Wait. You did get the placebo dose of DX8, didn’t you?”

“Uh, no. Somehow, it was switched with the real thing. I assumed you knew, considering I was high off my butt even before Lily kidnapped you.”

Karlin’s eyes grew wide.

“I had no idea! If I hadn’t thought you were sober, I never would have gone outside with Lily in the first place and left you all alone. I just assumed you were trying to stay undercover.”

Asher shrugged. “To be fair to you, my acting is pretty great.”

He expected some kind of retort, but she hadn’t seemed to have heard him.

Instead, she was looking off into space, a smile spreading across her face. “Well, that explains why the sedative didn’t work like Cora planned. It acted as a trip killer instead.”

“You know, I did notice that I started feeling better after the–”

He didn’t even have a chance to finish his sentence. The woman was off in her own world already, smiling to herself.

“Fascinating,” Karlin was saying excitedly. “Most of the sedative drugs we had in the lab shouldn’t have worked. We hadn’t really tested them thoroughly, but there was a lot of data to cross-reference, and I’ve been tinkering with that for years. Most of them have been tested against ayahuasca extensively, and the dimethyltryptamine that interacts with the 5-HT2A receptor is primary within the DX8 synthesis–”

That was it.

He couldn’t wait any more.

He was going to kiss that gorgeous, infuriating dork and make sure she knew without a doubt how he felt about her.

This wasn’t the right time, but fireworks and flowers were in short supply right now.

Asher leaned toward Karlin and cradled her jaw gently.

Before she had a chance to argue–or finish talking about whatever incomprehensible science stuff was currently rattling around in her brain–he pressed his lips to hers.

Kissing her felt like he was high on DX8 all over again, but it was so, so much better.

His heart was thumping as her soft lips touched his, and when she reached up to stroke the back of his neck, he thought he was going to pass out right there.

The moment ended way too fast for his liking.

He sank back down into his own chair, grinning stupidly. Karlin was already narrowing her eyes at him, her cheeks going red.

“What was that? Seriously, you need to warn me before you–do that,” she stammered.

“You interrupted me first.”

She considered this for less than a second.

“Fine. I guess. But not with–not withthat.”

He formed his fingers into two circles and held them over his eyes as if they were glasses. “No, you went with telling me all about the blah, blah, blah, 123BXY Periodic Table.”

For a second she looked so annoyed that he thought she might actually slap him, which of course only made him smile even more.

Goodness, she was pretty.

---