Page 10 of Nomad: Violent Devotion

I should’ve been calculating angles, escape routes, the easiest place to put a bullet through his skull. Instead, I’ve spent half the ride wondering what it would feel like if he reached over and covered my hand with his. It’s fucking pathetic, and I hate myself a little.

Walker unlocks room seven and pushes the door open.

The room is aggressively ordinary. Brown carpet and a floral bedspread that has probably survived three decades. The colors are faded, some flowers obliterated entirely by something that looks suspiciously like a burn mark. There’s a lingering trace of bleach and old sex in the air, the kind of scent that seeps into your skin and doesn’t let go.

I glance around before looking back at him. “You really know how to show a girl a good time.”

His mouth twitches. “It was this or the Ritz.”

“I think the Ritz has fewer suspicious stains.”

He steps inside after me, and the door shuts with a heavy click. The sound crawls down my spine, a reminder that out here, at the edge of nowhere, we might as well not exist. No one will hear me if I scream. Not that I’ll ever let him have that satisfaction.

Without a word, he reaches into his pocket and tosses my switchblade onto the little Formica table below the stained window. It skids across the cheap surface before coming to rest.

“I liked that knife,” I say, voice sharp enough to cut. It’s a warning. Or maybe a test, to see how close he’ll let me get before he flinches.

“I noticed.”

“You going to give it back?”

“When I stop thinking you’ll try to stick it in me.”

“I still might.”

“I’m aware.” The fact that he says it so calmly irritates me far more than if he’d laughed.

He plants himself between me and the door. Those grey-blue eyes don’t wander over my body this time. They’re searching my face.

“What were you doing there?”

“I’ve been to a lot of places today.”

“The gun deal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His jaw flexes. “Poppy.”

“Walker.” I mimic his tone.

His voice hardens, the edges serrated with growing frustration that he doesn’t bother to hide anymore. “What the hell were you doing there?”

I shrug. “Maybe I took a wrong turn.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’ve got an awful sense of direction.”

“You walked straight toward two patched men in the middle of an arms exchange.” I shrug, and his patience frays another thread, voice rising in volume and heat. “Do you even understand how dangerous that was?”

I laugh, loud and reckless, because the alternative is letting him see how close to the edge he’s got me. “Dangerous? You have no fucking idea.”

He doesn’t flinch. Of course he doesn’t. Nothing rattles Walker. Not the way I taunt him. Not the way I look at his mouth and imagine it between my legs, teeth scraping, tongue claiming. Not the way my body aches for him even now.

“Why were you there?” he asks again, his tone even.

“You keep asking me that.”