Page 23 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"Go," Sebastian says. Amelia collects her unopened folder, and Gideon's already at the door.

"Carter," Gideon says without turning. "Whatever you decide — decide it with your eyes open."

Then they're gone, and it's only us, and the cold. Sebastian lets the room keep its own quiet. That is the habit I've stopped expecting from him.

"You're afraid," he says finally. "I can feel it. The bond carries that much." He lifts a hand before I get a word out. "I'm telling you so you know I'm not pretending I can't. Not so you'll think I'm reading you. I won't use it. If I ever do, leave."

"You felt me deciding to come down here?"

"I felt you stop hating the idea." He says it like a fact he isn't proud of.

I let the fact find its place. The room hums faintly — not the awful office drone, something deeper, machines keeping a hidden world quiet.

"Does it make me a fool?" I ask, "to stay anywhere near this?"

"I won't answer that for you."

"You could lie. Tell me escape is best."

"Doing so would be a decision I made about your life. I'm trying not to do that."

And that thing I've been refusing since the night the truth came down. Not the vampires. Not the law that calls me a liability. This: that I feel something for him, that didn't burn off when the floor dropped out of my world. Fear didn't kill it. Fear made it louder.

"I don't have any trust in you," I say. "Actually, I don't. Not every ugly piece. Maybe not most of it."

"I know."

"But the feelings are real. They were real before I knew what lives under that suit of yours. They're not going anywhere, which is inconvenient for both of us." My voice holds. "If Ileave now, I'm not choosing safety. I'm choosing not to know. And I've spent my whole life being the woman who investigates everything, just like my Dad."

"Then find out," he says. No pull behind it. No fate. Just my own two feet.

I battle with my mind back and forth, until I make the decision.

"I'm staying," I say. "For the truth. Not because anything tells me to. If you ever confuse those two things, we're finished."

"Understood."

It doesn't feel settled. It feels like standing on a ledge and calling it a resolution. But two floors under the city I thought I knew, that's the bravest thing I have.

16

SEBASTIAN

The storm bullies the skyline, then the windows—in one violent sheet, no warning. Lightning bleaches the office white, and the city below flickers into hard white lines, all nerves and voltage. Thunder follows. Jasmine walks in on the second flash.

"Another release contract. Legal swears it has to be filed tonight." She sets a single page on the blotter and avoids her eyes from meeting mine. "Don't ask why they waited until eight p.m."

She starts walking back out, I get up, reach the door before her, and close it. I stand directly in her way from leaving. I turn, and for one charged second I second guess what I'm about to do and say.

"You can go out that door whenever you want. I won't get in the way of that. But?—"

"You'd rather I stayed."

"Not that. I'd rather stop pretending like there isn't more to this. To us. I mean, c'mon Jasmine, it stopped being professional weeks ago. I gave you space, thought it was the decent thing to do. But this is becoming, to keep it politely, damn well frustrating."

"To me, or to yourself?"

"Both. I tried to want you less. Self-denial is easy for me. But I feel yours too."