Page 76 of Bride

“Need anything from me?” Lowe asks while I slip into the network, voice pitched low.

I nod between keystrokes. “Set up the Ubertooth and hand me the LAN Turtle.” I snort at his wide-eyed I-didn’t-know-the-essay-was-due-today-and-my-dog-ate-it-anyway expression. “I was kidding. Just keep guard.”

“Thank fuck.” His relief could jump-start a truck’s battery. “How long do you need?”

“Six minutes, tops. Too long?”

“No. I doubt they know how little time it takes you to feed.”

I beam up at him. “Why, thank you.”

“Was that a compliment?” His head tilts in confusion.

“Wasn’t it?”

“Not intentionally.”

“Weren’t you trying to say how low-maintenance I am?”

“No.”

“Bummer.” I bend my head and quickly type the code. “Well, I rescind my warm acceptance of your non-compliment.”

“If you think that’s what it was, you need better ones.”

“Better what?”

“Compliments.”

I look up once more. He’s staring, his eyes halfway between unreadable and indecipherable. “What do you mean?”

“You need to be told the right things.” He shrugs casually, but the movement feels the opposite of casual. “That you’re intelligent, and incredibly skilled at what you do, and brave. That despite your weird belief that you’re heartless, you’re more genuinely caring than anyone I’ve ever met. That you’re so resilient, I can’t quite wrap my head around it. That you’re very...” He pauses. Wets hislips. My heartbeat skips. “Very beautiful to look at. Always so beautiful. And that—”

He pauses abruptly, lifting his palm. His shoulders tense, shifting to acute vigilance.

“Someone is coming,” he whispers.

“Emery?” I mouth. I can’t make out any noises, but Were hearing is better than mine.

Lowe shakes his head, and two seconds later I hear them, too. Voices.Twovoices. Two men, coming down the stairs.

“Emery’s guards,” he says, barely audible.

The possibility of being caught freezes me. Then the image of Ana pops into my head—the way Emery tried to take her, how terribly she might have hurt her, and fear,realfear drives through me like a spear. We can’t go back home empty-handed.

“Don’t,” I whisper when Lowe is about to turn off the computer. The steps sound terrifyingly closer. “It just needs a couple more minutes.”

“If they come in and find us—”

“They won’t.” I turn off the monitor. “And we’ll—”

I have an idea, but it’s easier shown than explained, so I grasp Lowe’s hand and tug him closer, walking backward until I hit one of the square columns on the sides of the fireplace. The cliché almost makes my teeth hurt, and if Emery’s guards are media literate even just at a third-grade level, they’re not going to fall for it. But it might buy us a couple of minutes, and that’s all that matters.

“Kiss me,” I order, pulling him farther into me. He needs to be inside my space, towering over me.

“What?” Lowe’s brow is one deep furrow.

“Let’s just pretend we got—we’re newly married and got, I don’tknow, horny, and—” And ended up in a random office. Maybe we’re kinky. Maybe we’re idiots. Maybe we’re pathetic.

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