Free Forsaken By Shadow by Kait Nolan Page B

It’s just a fact, Ember. He slipped up somehow. Or I did. I knew it was only a matter of time—”
    “ It was me,” she burst out.
    He stopped talking and stared at her.
    “ It was me they followed. I’m the one who was careless, who skipped some precautions. Because, yes, I was reckless, and at the time the only thing in the world that mattered to me was seeing you again.”
    Emotion flashed over his face, too fast for her to read. “Ember—”
    “ Shut up, I’m not finished. I’ve had ten years to regret those mistakes, to become someone who dots every ‘i’ and crosses every ‘t’. I follow the rules, and I’m well goddamned trained at what I do. So if you think I’m going to go off half-cocked and risk losing my father the way I lost you, then you don’t know me at all.”
    The fire along her arms winked out as misery swamped her. She turned away from him. Could this be any more of a disaster? She’d recruited him specifically because she’d thought he’d follow her lead, do what she said. What needed to be done. When had he become so careful and conservative? Never mind that he’d raised good points. Careful and conservative was the reason the Council wouldn’t send an extraction team.
    Hands settled on her shoulders. “I’m not trying to shoot you down here, Embry. But if we’re going to do this, we have to be careful about it. I know you don’t want to lose Adan. Neither do I. But I don’t want to screw something up and risk losing you. Not now. Not again.”
    She knew her jaw was clenched and defiant, though she didn’t turn to look at him. “I won’t screw this up.”
    “ Then you agree to be sensible about this?” he asked. “You promise you won’t try to do anything on your own?”
    “ I promise I won’t do anything stupid.” It wasn’t quite the same thing, but Gage seemed satisfied with her response. She turned to face him, and his hands fell away. “We can’t really plan much for this. As you said, we won’t know enough until we get in tomorrow.”
    “ Then in the meantime, you need to decompress. You’ll be more effective if you’re calm and cool when we go in there.”
    Embry gave a harsh laugh. “I haven’t slept well. I’ve hardly been able to breathe since they took my dad. Exactly how do you propose I decompress?”
    Something hot sprang into his eyes, and Embry felt her skin flush with an entirely different heat.
    “ We could talk,” he said.
    “ Talk?” she asked faintly. Nothing at all in his expression suggested talking.
    “ About the last time we saw each other. Before things went to shit. You changed things between us.”
    Touch me. The echo of her words swept through her, snapping desire to life. She had wanted him so much. She still wanted him.
    “ I did.”
    He hesitated, not moving any closer. “If things had gone differently. If we hadn’t been interrupted, would you have changed your mind about that?”
    Never. “Would you?”
    One corner of his mouth tipped in amusement. She wanted to press her lips just there.
    “ I spent every day from the time you were sixteen trying to convince myself that you were my sister.”
    Embry blinked. “Excuse me?”
    “ Because of your father. He treated me like a son, and I didn’t think he’d much appreciate the thoughts I was having about his daughter.”
    She wondered if those thoughts had run parallel to hers and whether he’d lain awake nights aching for her. “I never thought of you as a brother.”
    The other corner of his lips twitched into a full smile. “It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that back then since that was essentially the lynchpin of my self-discipline.”
    Her mind conjured up the memory of Gage braced over her, straining desperately to control himself as she shamelessly kept him pinned with her legs. She had no idea why she’d chosen that night to test him, except that she was so tired of waiting, of wrestling with all the feelings he stirred up in her and not