Page 30 of Pulse Zero
“Why did you get it?” I asked before I could think twice.
He shrugged as he leaned back against the wall again. “I have a tattoo artist friend, and she let me pick something when I turned eighteen. I panicked. She said, ‘Pick anything.’ I said, ‘Unicorn.’ Now Penelope and I are bonded for life. She’s seen things.”
When I didn’t respond, his expression turned sharp, curious. Victorious.
“You’re smiling.”
I didn’t even realize I was.
I cleared my throat and got back to work, demandinganother hour of silence from him.
The memory sits heavy in my chest now.
That was a mistake. All of it. Letting him spend time out of his room. The questions. The pizza. The conversations. The way I haven’t even realized he’s been chipping away at the walls I’ve spent years building and maintaining.
Getting close to your hostage is dangerous. It’s innate knowledge. Emotional compromise leads to hesitation.
Hesitation gets you killed.
And yet here I am.
Which is why I’m still aiming my gun at him and soaking up that mixture of fear and arousal swirling around in his eyes and filling the shower as tangible as the steam.
“Turn the water off.”
My voice comes out rough and tight, unfamiliar even to my ears.
He does what I say, the sudden silence loud in the concrete basement. The steam clings to the glass, blurring him. Softening him.
I should make him get out. Put on clothes. Lock him back up.
Instead, I open the door and step inside. The heat hits me first. Then that damn look in his eyes. He stands there, wet and tense, chest rising and falling too fast. Water tracks down his body in slow lines. His gaze flicks from the gun to my face and back again.
“Well,” he says, voice a little shaky but still somehow managing to have that cocky edge. “You finally decided to join me. Took you long enough.”
“Shut up.”
“Aw. You always say the sweetest things.”
I move closer, and his back hits the wall of the shower. He’s trapped between it and my gun, but he still lifts his chin like he’sdaring me.
“Do you have any idea,” I say quietly as I brush the barrel of my gun across his forehead, sweeping a strand of wet hair away, “how dangerous it is to provoke someone aiming a gun at you?”
He swallows hard, staring into my eyes like he trusts me a lot more than he should. “Sure. But you haven’t shot me yet, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.”
My grip tightens on the weapon as I bring it down to press just below his chin, tilting his head back. “You think this is a game?” I ask in a low growl.
“I think,” he says, speaking just above a whisper now, “that you don’t actually want to hurt me.”
The certainty in his tone makes something twist behind my ribs.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you brought me Hawaiian pizza after I told you it was my favorite, even though you think it’s disgusting. I know you give me time out of that room because I told you I was going crazy in there alone. I know you’re thinking about what I said earlier, even though you won’t admit it.”
Then his mouth curves, slow and wicked despite the fear still lingering in his gaze.
“I know you could use a distraction like I could.”
