Lara’s breath huffed out. “Be serious.” “I’m dead serious,” Justin said, and despite his smile, she almost believed him. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Tel Axton I forced you. He can’t blame you then.”
9 0
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
Memory uncoiled inside her, dark and insidious as smoke.
No, Simon would not blame her if she were forced.
She shuddered, her hands closing convulsively on her clothes. “What if he cal s the police?”
“You real y think your buddy Axton wants the cops on his turf?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. Rockhaven was its own community under the Rule, school and glassworks forming an isolated enclave in the rol ing countryside. Simon would not seek help or accept interference from their neighbors.
“But if he thinks I’ve been abducted . . .”
“You’l be home before he has time to file a report.”
“He’l stil have questions.”
“So tel him the truth. I broke into your room. I had a knife.”
Justin’s lips curved upward, teasing, daring. “You couldn’t resist me.”
She stuck out her chin, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness under the towel. “I’m not a victim.”
She would not be a victim ever again.
“You think you should struggle?” He cocked his head, as if considering. “Right now, you could probably take me.
But if you want it to look good, we could knock over the lamp or something. Rumple the sheets.”
She flushed. Her awareness of him lay on her like a second skin, twitching with his very pulse, his every breath.
She was exquisitely conscious of the effort it cost him simply to sit upright and smile. The echoes of his pain throbbed in her temples, the bite of the heth gnawed at her own throat. She could feel the sweat at the smal of his back, the faint tremor in his legs of drugs or exhaustion. He must be half dead with pain and fatigue.
And yet he felt more alive to her than anyone she had ever known.
F o r g o t t e n s e a 91
“We want them to think I was coerced,” she said cool y.
“Not seduced.”
“Too bad.” Another glint from those golden eyes. “I was prepared to be convincing.”
Her pulse fluttered. He was weakened and desperate.
How could he flirt with her now? “You convinced me to drive. That wil have to be enough for you.”
For me.
He grinned, undiscouraged and approving. “That puts me in my place.”
It took al her wil not to smile back.
“I have to get dressed,” she said and escaped into the tiny bathroom with her clothes.
He stood when she came out. He fil ed her room, as tal as Simon and leanly muscled. “Where’s your car?”
His size, his sudden shift, took her aback. “I don’t own a car. But I know the code to the garage.”
“Keys?”
“Hanging up inside.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s meant to be.”
There were no thieves among the nephilim. Their vehicles, gray sedans and blue school vans, were held in common.
He nodded once. “Ready, then?”
A chil chased up her arms. Simon had accused her of endangering the community, of lacking self-knowledge and obedience. What made her think she knew better than the headmaster? Than Zayin?
Justin watched her. Waiting. The black bead gleamed against the burned skin of his throat.
9 2
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
“I’m not sure I can even get you through the gates,” she blurted out.
His gaze remained steady on hers. “I guess we’l find out.”
