Page 54 of Exit Strategy

“Hm?” I looked up against Kurt’s shoulder and he frowned at me vaguely, concern coded into his blue eyes.

“You alright, Love?”

“Hm? Yeah! Why?”

“You didn’t hear anything I just said, did you?” he asked, and a grin overtook him.

“No, I’m sorry. I guess I was lost in my own thoughts.” I frowned.Thatcertainly wasn’t like me. I mean, ithadbeen, but I’d quickly learned not to let it happen anymore.

Kurt chuckled and gave me a squeeze.

“Alright, Love. No matter,” he said, giving a luxurious stretch beneath me. I disentangled myself from my new lover, which justthatthought alone made me smile, and watched as he got up from the bed.

He had an amazing physique, riddled with small scars here and there, thin white lines almost lost in his pale complexion which wasn’t quite as ghost white as mine.

Some curved and wicked, some long and thin, punctuated to either side with a neat row of dots where he’d been stitched back together again. One on his ribs, another along one hip, but nowhere was he as scarred as much as his big hands, whichthosescars were much more apparent; standing out against the rich golden hue his knuckles had taken with the kiss of the sun.

His hands were a roadmap of violence and pain that’d been dealt to what could have been countless foes. Scraped and abraded, a million and one little splits and cuts from punches thrown. All it took was one look at Owen “Kurt” Worthington’s hands to know that he was a man of action – a man used tousingthose hands. To work, to punch, and secretly to pleasure. I knew that secret firsthand now and I wouldn’t trade that insider knowledge for anything.

“A lot to think about, yeah?” he asked me, and I looked up at him from where I hugged my knees beneath the crisp, thin, white sheet of the hotel’s bed.

“Yeah, sorry,” I murmured.

“Don’t be,” he said, leaning down and kissing my forehead. I closed my eyes and let myself drown in that comforting touch, well aware that they could be lost to me at any moment. My heart dropped into my narrow ass at the thought… that we were on borrowed time. That this big, strong, beautifully rugged man was likely going to die because of me.

I sniffed, the tears hot, furious, and immediate at the mere thought of it. My nightmares full of the images of Kurt lying in a pool of his own blood, those eyes that looked at me with such tenderness and care staring blankly, sightlessly. His life stolen before my mind’s eye and all because ofmeand my cursed existence under New Eden’s thumb.

“Hey now, what’s this?” he asked, thumbing one of the errant tears away and sucking it from the pad of his thumb. I blinked up at him and said the only thing that came to mind – the burning need to know driving the words past the lump of fear in my throat.

“How bad is it really, Kurt?” He stared at me, the silence stretching between us, the calculations going on just behind his eyes as he searched my expression as earnestly as I searched his. “And please, don’t lie to me to make me feel better,” I begged. “The not knowing… it’s killing me.”

His generous lips thinned down into a grim line and his chest swelled with a slow, deep breath that he let out as a resigned sigh.

“They’re looking for you,” he said. “We both knew that.”

I nodded. “And?”

“They’ve got Madeline Oberisk leading the charge.”

I swallowed hard.

“Maddie?” I echoed, my mouth going dry.

“Aye.”

“Is that what you were looking at when I woke up?” I asked. I felt hot and cold and hot all over again within the span of a blink of an eye as panic slowly fizzed, foaming and bubbling like acid through my veins.

Never was there another more devoted to New Eden’s cause and doctrine than Madeline Oberisk. She’d been such a sweet soul as a little girl but had been made hard very quickly when she realized she would never be one of the chosen daughters. Too big, too rawboned, not delicate enough… I could tell these things had hurt her deeply, had put quite the chip on her shoulder, but Madeline wasn’t one to sulk or despair.

She was too hard, too determined for that. When she’d realized she could never be first or even second among daughters of her generation, she’d decided to become first amongsoldiersin the war against climate change and the environmental agency. She’d quickly and eagerly bought into the ignorance of humanity being a plague upon the planet and had become militant in her training to become something like the sole protector of New Eden and its mission to save the planet from the destructiveness of its inhabitants.

She had begun to ruthlessly believe, within New Eden’s teachings, that there was only one true way and that if things came down to force, if necessary, that she would be all in and at the forefront of the charge.

She had begun climbing within the ranks accordingly, in her own way, and her fanaticism was as downright terrifying as she was physically imposing.

“That’s utterly terrifying,” I blurted without thinking, and Kurt, who had sunk back down to the edge of the bed, put his hand over one of mine where it grasped my knee over the sheet.

“Aye,” he agreed. “Which is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

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