Page 80 of Cream and Punishment
And commit to the perfect opportunity to havethe talk? Not on his life. “I’m busy tomorrow.”
“Then Monday.”
“I’m busy then, too.” Busy doingwhat, I had no idea. I was really banking on Max being too polite to pry.
He sighed, his muscles way too distracting from such a simple movement. “We’re going to have to talk about it eventually, Dekker.”
I shook my head vigorously. “I’m perfectly happy pretending nothing happened and moving on from it, thank you.”
“Well, I’m not.”
I froze. He’d used his Special Agent voice. The one that made my knees weak, and my heart compose sonnets on the spot, despite the fact that I hadn’t written a sonnet once in my life.
“This is too important to me to let it go.” He gestured between us. “Weare too important to me.”
Holy halibut, was I dreaming? That didn’t sound like something someone who regretted kissing me would say. Maybe he wanted to solidify the boundary between friends and more, and our friendship was what he was referring to. Or maybe…
I shut the thought down before my fantasy of miniature Max’s and Dekkers running around took off without me. I couldn’t do that to myself. I wouldn’t let myself hope until I knew.
“Okay,” I agreed, my voice quiet despite my thumping pulse. “Tomorrow it is.”
“In that case” —he moved forward as if reaching for me, but the brunette guy Alec shouted something to him, and Max stopped short— “may the best team win.”
I grinned, my stomach swooping despite my vow not to get my hopes up. “Can’t wait to see what you bake for me.”
He returned the smile. “Funny, I was about to say the same thing to you.”
I chuckled, and my smile didn’t fade until I’d made it all the way to my team.
“Dang, girl,” Kris cocked a hip, looking every bit like a boho superspy, “you gottwoguys vying for your attention now?”
Hattie cackled, the sound much too sedate for her through the mask. “The way that Max of yours reacted when blondie boy asked you out—whoo, doggy. If looks could kill, Blondie would be roast on a slice of toast.”
“How could you even see his look through the mask?” I asked, more to distract from the fluttering in my chest than anything else. “There’s no way you could see that much while taking the photos.”
“Oh, I saw enough,” Hattie answered, aloof as always. “That boy of yours didn’t try very hard to hide anything.”
“Let’s focus,” Lex interjected, mercifully saving me. She held up our white and pink bedazzled flag and led us toward our half of the turf. “Each of them is trained in tactics and firearms, so even if they’re wearing wedding dresses, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
Yeah, our odds didn’t look so great. Lex and Rowan knew what they were doing, but otherwise we had a drama teacher, a librarian, a stay-at-home mom, and a baker going up against a bunch of trained agents.
“We’re kind of at a huge disadvantage here,” Annie said, voicing my thoughts. “How do you figure we’ll stand a chance?”
Lex chuckled. “Don’t sell yourselves short, okay? We’ve got a CrossFit legend who can climb trees and run in dresses with her eyes closed” —she nodded at Hattie— “a wildcard no one will know how to defend against” —now a nod at Annie— “a secret weapon no one will see coming” —and a nod at Rowan— “and two agents of our own.”
And that left me. The baker who hated cardio and thoughtswolewas what you got after Thanksgiving dinner. Awesome.
“Furthermore” —Lex’s masked face panned across the group— “I know everyone on that team. So we won’t play the game, we’ll play our opponents.”
twenty-seven
“Okay,here’stheplan.”Lex crouched, speaking low despite the fact that the boys were on the other half of the wooded area, conveniently divided by the vehicles. “With Colt as their team captain, they’re going to have a plan. A good one. It’ll most likely be pretty cloak and dagger, especially where they’re all trained one way or another.”
I nodded, my insides squirming with nerves, anticipation, and the distinct weirdness that came from seeing Lex in work mode. No wonder Max thought she was a machine if this was the only side he ever saw.
“So we strike fast, and we strike hard, all at once,” she continued. “This won’t give them a chance to put their plan into motion and increases our chances of surviving and returning with their flag to our side.” She met each of our eyes. “Instead of it being one shot and you’re out, it’s more like you keep going until you can’t anymore. No one, not even Kris, can keep going while being shot by three or more people at once, so we’ve got to go together.”
So we’d all get a chance to be shot instead. Awesome.
