Page 88 of Wicked Heat

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Do you trust me,” he repeats, his voice serious enough to make my heart squeeze a little.

“Yes,” I say. “Don’t you know that?”

The light changes, but he meets my eyes before moving forward. “I’d like to get Noah started if it’s okay with you.”

This time my whole chest goes tight, and the feeling isn’t warm and enticing as it was only moments ago. Instead, it’s hard and a little terrifying.

I force myself to say, “Yes. If you think it’s okay, then of course, it’s okay.”

He takes his eyes off the road long enough to meet and hold mine. If he can see my fear, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He simply lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my palm.

And right then, although nothing has really changed at all, everything changes. Because I know that I really do trust him. Wholly and completely. With my life. And—though I’m not sure he knows it or even wants it—also with my heart.

He tugs his hand from mine to shift gears again, and I wait for the feeling to dissipate. It doesn’t. Somehow, someway, Ash has truly gotten under my skin. Or maybe he’d always been there, and this is the first time I’ve allowed myself to realize it.

I don’t know.

All I’m certain of is that something has shifted inside me. I trust him, yes. But what I feel is a hell of a lot stronger than that.

“You said you kept the URL the first QR code sent you to, right?”

I turn in my seat. “Yeah. Why?”

“Do you have it with you?”

“It’s in my notes app on my phone.” I pull up the app while we’re talking. “Why?”

He tells me to take his phone and open his email app. When I do, I see an email already composed to NCarter. The subject is “party details” and in the body, there’s a web address.

“That’s where the QR code we got at the hotel sent us,” he says. “Now take yours, text it to my phone, then copy it into the email and hit send.”

“Party details?”

“We’re not breaking a rule by sending that info to Noah,” he says, “but why take chances?”

I gape at him. “You think whoever is doing this to me is monitoring our emails?”

“Actually, I don’t. But again, why⁠—”

“Take chances,” I finish. And I have to silently agree.

As soon as the email is sent, he reaches for my hand, and our fingers twine again. I know he’ll have to let go the next time he needs to shift, but for the moment, I relish the connection. I’m about to ask him if he thinks that Noah will really be able to get any solid info from those URLs, when my phone rings.

“Aria,” I say, glancing down at the phone in my lap as Ash pulls his hand away and puts it on the wheel, almost as if we’re pre-teens caught kissing in the bleachers. The thought makes me smile, and I hear the brightness and humor in my voice as I answer my phone.

My smile fades with Aria’s first words. “Are you okay?”

“As much as I can be under the circumstances.”

Beside me, Ash mouths what?

I shake my head, my attention on Aria. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Oh. Um. Nothing,” she says. “I mean, no more than we already know about. I just had one of my feelings.”

Woo, I mouth to Ash, who bites back a grin. “What kind of feeling?” I ask Aria. “Something about me? About Ash?”