Page 64 of Never the Same

“I can’t sleep.” I swallowed. “You?”

He held the back of his neck and rotated his head, the wall of abdominal muscles tightening from the movement. Now all I could think about was that hand cupping my throat earlier, and I hadn’t just liked it—it’d turned me on.

“Gwen made contact earlier than expected.” He rested his forearm on the table.

“And?” I straightened, arms returning to my sides, and his eyes shot straight to my breasts like a reflex. A chill whipped up my spine, and I shivered. My nipples were probably poking through the fabric, and I didn’t even care. Because he wasn’t hightailing it from the room for sharing the same air as him. “Reed?” I prompted, waiting for him to share what Gwen told him.

He slowly locked in. On my face. Then on the mission. “No surprise, but your situation is unique. You’re an anomaly.”

The last word landed heavy, like a death sentence instead of an observation.

I forgot about my hard nipples and the fact this T-shirt wasn’t doing a bang-up job covering much of my legs and approached him. “What about Trevor’s cousin? I thought—”

“Not related.” His nostrils flared, and a vein became visible at the side of his neck. He was working hard not to snap at my proximity.

I backed up to the required three feet, but he remained tense, every part of him visibly taut.

“Closest match, but still off,” he continued, maintaining eye contact, but it was clearly taking everything in him to do so. The man looked like he was trying to fight the laws of gravity and was losing the battle. “Gwen’s program puts it at a four percent probability that the same drug used on you was used on Tessa. And the same person? .002.”

My throat went dry, and my stomach hollowed out at the news.

His chair scraped back. The sound was sharp in the hushed quiet of the room. He stood, his black pajama bottoms hanging low on his hips, the navy waistband of his briefs on display.

“We’re thinking something new was used on you.” He slid his hands into his pockets, leaning his hip against the table, and the casual movement only made his shoulders look broader, his arms more tense.

The man’s body was a work of art. Well, the type of art found in a war museum. Bronzed skin that was carved, cut, and strong. Ready to do battle and stand on the front lines as a sacrifice to keep others safe.

“So, what next?” I backed up against the counter, needing its solid edge for support. I was too tempted to run into his arms and violate that three-foot rule. “You’ve got contacts. Constantine. That Carter guy. The Irishman who let us use his jet.”

“I do, and they’ll turn something up, I’m sure.” He brought one hand to his face and slowly lowered it from his forehead to chin as if trying to steal away the fatigue and wake up. Or maybe focus up. “The Irishman—Sebastian Renaud—is talking to everyone in The League to see if they’ve heard anything, too.”

“The League?” It didn’t strike a chord of familiarity, unfortunately. “Is that the name of a secret society or something?”

“More like the secret society.”

My laugh came thin and brittle. “Of course it has a name like that.” In truth, I just didn’t want to offer up the possibility that one group might be even more secretive than this League organization—my own family.

“There used to be two major players in the world of criminal secret societies, The Alliance and The Collective. The League took out The Alliance, and Falcon Falls wiped out The Collective,” he continued. “So if there’s a group out there tied to what happened to you, trust me, we have the best of the best on our side in this.”

“Even if that secret group is my family?” I frowned. “Well, someone from my family or team.”

He nodded. “We’ll give them forty-eight hours. If nothing breaks—”

“Then I crawl back to my family and demand answers?” The words tasted like acid, and I fought the burn happening behind my eyes. Goodbye, lust. Hello, sick betrayal. “Do I need to force them to tell me everything they know? Do you think they even will?”

“Gwen told me tonight that if she and Julian join forces, maybe they can work a miracle with the footage and salvage the unsalvageable. If we can see what happened to you in Rome . . .” His voice softened, but his message wasn’t exactly comforting. “Separately, it’s impossible to undo what your brother’s source code did. Together? Maybe.”

“But we’d need to convince my tight-knit family to let you into their inner circle, and right now, even I’m an outsider.” I turned away from him and braced against the counter.

At least Julian seemed on board already when it came to Gwen. I wasn’t so sure what to think about the rest of my family. “And if they let us in, what if it’s a Trojan horse and we wind up working with the enemy?”

“I don’t see a way around taking the risk.”

That ache in my stomach returned, sharp, curling me forward slightly. “Is it awful that I’m praying for a lead just so I don’t have to admit to my mother I was wrong to leave?” I pushed off the counter and whirled around, finding him breaking that three-foot rule, right in front of me. Like so close he could catch my breath with his tongue.

His mouth curved, a shadow of warmth there. Then he shocked me, setting a fist under my chin, his thumb grazing the line of my jaw. My pulse shot up high and hard.

“You weren’t wrong to leave,” he murmured as his thumb slipped across my lip in the same way he’d done earlier. “Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until you step away.” His brows tightened, and he immediately pulled away and walked back more than three feet. More like six. The man really was scared of me—well, at least, his obvious attraction to me.