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The nervous look she shot me did weird things to my stomach. But she went right back to working, deep concentration etched into her features as she cleaned me up and put some gauze over it.

I didn’t want to let go of her hair. I wanted to keep touching her, but as she sat back, she batted my hand away, dropped the supplies back into the kit, and snapped it shut. I handed it back up to Brooks, then angled myself toward Whitney.

“Where are you from originally?”

Silence.

“Are you running from someone?”

More silence.

“Who are you running from?”

She slid a glare at me, then looked out the window and proceeded to ignore me for the next hour.

But when her head bumped against the window, I realized she wasn’t ignoring me, she’d fallen asleep again. Like she’d only stayed awake to ask me if I was okay and to tend to my wound.

As gently as I could, I slowly lowered her head onto my thigh. A few strands of her hair fell over her eyes, so I brushed them back and kept petting her head. Her hair was so soft.

Vincent took a hard left, making Whitney slide further onto my lap. Right over my half-hard cock.

Jesus fuck, I wasn’t going to survive the drive like that. Gently, I shifted her so she was back on my thigh. She moaned, rubbing her cheek into my leg.

I was fully hard now, my cock straining against my pants. What would she do if she woke up and saw the state I was in?

And then Cade spoke and killed every ounce of desire in my body.

“Hey, you think we can hit up Cane’s? I’m fucking starving.”

Just like that, I went soft.

“No,” Vincent said.

In spite of the fact that we didn’t have a hierarchy in our group, I personally considered Vincent the leader. He was quiet, thoughtful, insanely intelligent, and scarily calculating. He was like a venomous snake, except he didn’t have any of the obvious, outward distinctions of one. He moved in the shadows, an intangible entity his prey never saw coming.

“Fuck, you’re a real drag sometimes, Vince.” Cade sighed and put his feet up on the dash.

There was a calm that had settled over everyone, the palpable relief that we’d completed the first parts of the plan. We got a reprieve now; we could go home, where we’d lie low for a while. I’d get to see Jesse again, the most precious person in my life and the main reason we were going to these lengths.

And then…we would strike.

THIRTEEN

“Hey. We’re here.”

A deep, velvety voice drifted through the fog of sleep, and as I started coming out of it, all I felt was heat beneath my cheek.

“Whitney. Wake up.”

Someone’s hand brushed across my temple, long fingers threading through my hair. Firm but gentle. It felt so good, I wanted to give in to it and slip back into that deep fog I’d just been in.

“Five more minutes,” I murmured. My hand was caught under something hot and hard, and when it moved, my eyes shot open.

Oh, fuck.

The only things in my field of vision were the back of the seat in front of us and Court’s thigh, which I was currently using as a pillow.

I jerked upright so quickly, I smashed my head into something hard.