Page 15 of Time to Bounce

She’d followed him down here from Great Falls to Dallas.

Grinding my teeth, I walked right up to Athena and grabbed her arm.

“No, thank you,” she pulled her arm away.

I caught her hip, twisted her to me, and smiled when she snarled.

“I said no, thank…” she trailed off when our eyes met.

My hair was longer.

I’d also dyed the white patch in my hair—a byproduct of a swimming accident when I was younger. I’d grown out my beard, too—it was so fucking long that I almost felt homeless.

I hadn’t had a beard like this since I was deployed to Iraq and even then I’d been able to keep it at manageable levels.

In the Aided Aimers, you didn’t shave.

At least, as a prospect I wasn’t allowed to, anyway.

“What the fuck are you doing here right now?” I snarled.

Her eyes went wide with astonishment, then she leaned in, whispering, “Gable? What are you doing here?”

I gritted my teeth, then said, “I’m here because I’m undercover. You’re about to blow that cover out of the water if you don’t get the fuck out of here.”

“I can’t,” she breathed. “I have a lead.”

I ground my molars together before saying, “If you don’t get out of here, you and I are both fucked.”

Literally, and figuratively.

If I could get her to leave, they’d let her go. They’d give me so much fucking shit that I’d never hear the end of it, but eventually their arrest would be the end result, and I could live with the ribbing.

“I’m not leaving,” she hissed.

“I’m not joking, Athena. This one time, please, can you just listen to me?” I asked. “I just need you to go.”

“Why?” she asked. “They don’t know that we know each other.”

I narrowed my eyes, hating that she could never take anything at face value. She always had to have her questions.

And, because I was pissed that she wasn’t automatically trusting me, I said, “Because they tasked me with fucking you in the middle of the bar, in front of everyone, to get my patch.”

She blinked.

“I…” she trailed off. “What?”

Before I could answer, Madman was there, leering at my side.

“It’s either him or me, sweet tits,” Madman said. “Which one is it going to be?”

And because I damn well knew that Madman would take Athena, whether she wanted him or not, I made a decision.

I would be going through with this.

I would be fucking Athena in the middle of a bar.

I would be taking advantage of her.

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