Page 61 of Red Flag, Green Light

Reaching, I grip his collar and pull him in. “Credit. I know what I want, and my vocabulary includes four-letter words likestop. Use some common sense. If you can’t be blatantly you, what are we even thinking of doing here? If being yourself pushes me away, shove. I don’t want to waste my time on something doomed to fail. Prove to me I’m also not too much for you, and let’s not do either of us the disservice of being anything less than our full selves.”

His gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth, then he mutters, “Too much for me?” His lips close over mine as he twists my hand out of his shirt, tangles our fingers, and pins them against my seat’s backrest. “Don’t be stupid,” he whispers into my mouth. “I want you like painkiller after I’ve been sliced into a thousand pieces. I need you to lace every nerve.”

My stomach flips, and flutters rise.

“Marry me.” He bites my lip.

A whimper escapes. “I’ll think about it.”

“No. You’ll do as you’re told.”

I shiver.

“What do you say when I give you a command, Ceres?”

Flushed, I repeat, “I’ll think about it, villain,” and, nevertheless, he smiles.

Chapter Seventeen

It’s probably morally compromised, but only probably.

Mars

Sara: Any chance you can make him six-foot-one…and a quarter?

Rouge: Consider it done.

I can’t remember a time I’ve ever been this happy before in my life. Ceres is giving me a chance. Ceres and I arealmosta couple. Ceres tastes sogood. I can’t inhale without remembering how she smelled. I can’t go three seconds without some odd tiny sound of hers echoing in my head, replaying, replaying, replaying.

“You’re going to have a mother soon,” I whisper to Gingerbread as I give her a snack that she stuffs into her cheek pouches with a dedication I find commendable. After she’s finished, her face is bursting, but she proceeds to look for more treats as though it isn’t. “Don’t be greedy.” I pet her little head.

Noise shuffles behind me, practically zombielike, and I lose some grasp on my mirth as I turn from Gingerbread’s living room cage and locate my brother, who has been sleeping roughly seventeen choppy hours a day, barely eating any carrot cake, and “working.”

A lot.

Assumingworkingmeans staring at a blank screen.

If something else doesn’t break soon, he might.

Putting Gingerbread back in her happy shark tank, I rise and trot into the kitchen as Jove squints into the fridge. “Good morning, brother dear.”

He grunts.

“There’s fresh carrot cake, for breakfast, if you’d like.”

It’s noon. Friday. A noon the Friday afterI kissed Ceres, and her eyes begged me for more, and I had to tell her to stop and be good, and that seemed to make herblissfully happyin its own way.

I kind of feel sick being so blessed while Jove’s struggling to function.

He closes the fridge. “I’m not here for food.”

“You’re not in the kitchen for food, at noon, when this is the first time you’ve left your room today?”

He nods, stoic, the silent type, and I decide that I’ll need Ceres to fall horrifically in love with me before I let her spend any time with my brother, who could double easily as a mafia crime lord. She loves mafia crime lords. And even if she says that oblivion isn’t her preferred archetype, I worry. Because of the shoulders.

Dragging my attention off said shoulders, I say, “Come on, babe. Tell me what’s going on.”

This man looks me square in the eye and says, “I’m working.”

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