Page 36 of Last Chance to Save the World

I make a noise in the back of my throat—a moan of assent and confirmation. The subvocal transmitter picks it up, and while I don’t know what the AI interpreted that sound as, it was enough to make Rian huff in laughter and take a step away.

I grab him by the jacket and pull him back.

Rian cocks an eyebrow at me. His lips are no longer on my skin, but his hands have a mind of their own, trailing up and down my spine, tracing to a low loop before his fingers curl against my hips, needy and desperate.

“I haven’t forgotten what you said before,” he says. His body may be spiraling into a feral state, but his eyes are clear and sharp.

“Oh?” I say, attempting to be relaxed and failing miserably. “I’ve forgotten. What did I say?”

He releases my hips, hands going to the wall on either side of my face as he leans over me. “If you wanted to steal something really valuable from a highly secure location, such as, say, the gala at the MIH, you’d just let someone else buy it and steal it from the less-secure location the new owner puts it in.”

I can feel the whole length of his body, pinning mine against the wall. This started as a ploy to talk somewhat privately in a room full of guests, but it’s rapidly turned into something else. When Rian looks at me now, there is not a single goddamn person in the whole room. It’s just him and me and too many clothes between us.

“Did I say that?” My voice is flippant; we both know that’s false. “Clever of me.”

Rian’s eyes narrow, and his lips twitch. “That’s you all over, isn’t it? Too clever by half.”

“I just know how to play the game.”

Except do I? Because I’m no longer certain who’s the predator and who’s the prey.

“This was never a game,” Rian says, his voice low, both a threat and a promise.

I open my mouth but he silences me with another kiss, hard and brutal, the kind of kiss that devours, the kind that’s not supposed to start in a trumped-up boardroom because it absolutely needs to end somewhere dark and private. This is the kind of kiss that shatters, breaking me up into bite-sized pieces, all the better to eat me.

When Rian rips away from that searing touch, the severing is as violent as the joining. His chest heaves, his lips are bruised and wet, and he is not even a tiny bit satiated.

His forehead bumps into mine, a moment of respite.

“Fuck everything,” Rian moans.

“No, just me.”

He gives me a little snort of appreciation. “Iknowyou’re up to something, and I cannot let you get away.”

“But you love me.”

That earns me a sardonic, deadpan look. “Ada, I know better than to fall for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” I’m all innocence.

“Someone I can never trust. There will always be an angle with you. You will always find a way to use me to your benefit. It would be utterly pointless for me to fall for you.”

I swipe a sweaty lock of dark brown hair off the side of his face. “Too late,” I whisper. “You already did.”

But Rian doesn’t rise to the bait. “Ada, I’m serious. You may be doing a bit of a Robin Hood act for me today, stealing from...”

He struggles to find the right word.Richisn’t strong enough to describe the type of wealth Strom Fetor wields like an axe.

I offer my own definition. “From an obscenely imbecilic man who crucified his own family to steal a bigger pot of the generational wealth that ensures he never once has to contemplate the deeply corrupt system of oppression that consistently enables him to fail up?”

“Yeah, that works,” Rian says. “And I’m with you. Making sure Fetor doesn’t win, just this once, when the salvation of all of Earth’s citizens is on the lines, that’s...”

“Noble?” I suggest.

“Close enough to it.” He sighs. “But this whole endeavor aside...I still believe in the law.”

I let my head rest against the cool wall. The more words there are between us, the further we drift from that moment where everything felt like fire in the best possible way. “So, what you’re saying is, all I have to do is seduce you with legalese?”

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