Page 91 of Beautifully Ruined
“Or just take her and make you do what I want for free.” Thomas leans in, looking at me and then at Cade. “What do you say?”
“I say that would be stupid.” Cade gives me a brief warning of a glance. “Very stupid. Take her, take anyone, and you won’t know if you can trust me. It goes both ways. I’ve come here, laid my cards on the table. But if you want to include threats, then I’m not playing.”
The man’s eyes turn cold and deadly on me. “But she walked in here. Into a private meeting. I’m trying to decide if she’s a gift or a distraction.”
A what?
My throat goes tight as adrenaline rips through my veins. “I’m neither.”
“Now, we both know that’s not true, little girl. You’re very much a distraction.”
His gaze slips down to the top button on my coat.
“One might say a honey pot, even.”
Cade sits way too still, eyes not moving from the man.
No, he’s not still. There’s a vibration in the air, like he’s ready to leap into action.
To protect?
What the hell have I walked into?
And what am I screwing up?
I swallow hard.
There has to be a way where we walk out, where I’m not taken, not handed around like a party gift.
The thought of that, in real life, makes everything in me shrivel.
“She’s not a gift for anyone,” Cade says low. “She?—”
“I’m his partner,” I hear myself say.
Cade’s gaze snaps to me as does he man’s, and all it does is spur me on, no matter how clear the warning is in Cade’s eyes.
“In hacking. We hack together.” My gaze snares on the computer. “You think he’s good, he’s nothing compared to me.”
From the corner of my eye, Cade’s sending me silent pleas to shut the fuck up.
But I can’t.
My mouth has started, and I’m not even sure a bullet to my head could stop it.
“We’re elite criminals. And partners in crime. Cybercrime. And we’re partners in life.”
Shut up, shut up.
Cade’s gaze tells me the exact same thing.
Only…only I’m caught by the fascination in this Thomas’s gaze, like I’m on his hook and he’s on mine and my deluded mind seems to now think more words will save the day, but only if I hammer home that concept of ‘partner’.
“Yes,” I say, even though no one’s uttered a word. “We’re partners. Business, crime, hacking, life. We’re life partners. In the bedroom, sometimes in public. And the only thing my honey pot wants to catch is him.”
I don’t even know what it means.
From the lascivious expression on Thomas’s face, I’ve made it utterly dirty.
