Free Didn't I Warn You by Amber Bardan

of shame and desire had me hard and desperate, even if unwilling. Her heat should’ve been a giveaway. My palms prickled with the memory of her fevered skin flowing slick and quivering under my touch. I sank to my knees beside the bed. Perhaps, I should’ve known she was unwell.
    But I hadn’t wanted to notice—I’d wanted to touch .
    Just like I had to touch now.
    I rubbed my thumb back and forth over the irresistible petals of her lips. Over the tiny split on her bottom lip that broke the silky smoothness. Why not touch—she was mine. Everything in me shook with the compulsion to sink my thumb into her hot mouth.
    Whoever recruited her knew what they were doing. Kept her life squeaky clean. Perfectly mundane.
    I’d found their one mistake.
    Six weeks.
    Her nose scrunched. I moved my touch over her cheekbone, where light freckles fanned out and faded. So deceptively wholesome. There were six weeks missing from her life where she’d vanished from the face of the planet. Six weeks where even though her absence was noted on her academic record, it was forgiven without reason. Six weeks long enough for an intensive training program with the right people.
    My fingertip found the groove in her cheek, where even resting her dimple creased skin.
    Yes, Angelina was the ultimate angelic weapon,
    Karim had been right. I’d been naive. I wanted to believe in her and I wanted to believe in what we’d shared. But one coincidence is a coincidence too many. Now there were four. The coffee shop. The elevator. The spying on the dock. Stowing away on a lifeboat.
    I’d be a fool to believe any of it, no matter how tempting it was.
    I tore myself free of the thrall of touching her, and stood.
    She’d been there on my bed. Thighs apart. Panties damp enough to see pussy-soaked fabric. Wet enough the musk of her lust reached me. That was believable. I could have fucked her. Clamped a hand around her throat and fucked her hard and rough the way the look in her eyes demanded.
    But she wanted that.
    She’d enticed me to take her. Is that how she’d get to me? Did she plan to seize me by the cock?
    Never .
    I scrubbed the side of my face with my palm. I still felt the lick she dragged over my jaw. The way she’d run her tongue over me like an animal—she took no prisoners.
    Neither would I.
    She had no idea who she was dealing with. If she thought she did, she was about to find out how wrong she could be.
    I’d be the one to take her. Push her. Exploit her weaknesses. Use her lust against her the way she’d intended to use mine against me.
    By the time I was done, I’d know her to her deceitful core.

EIGHT
    T HERE ’ S SOMETHING ABOUT puking up your guts that makes everything very real. You just don’t dream that shit—the heaving, the muscle contractions, the burning and definitely not the vile, acidic stench. I curled onto my side and retched foam into a bucket. When I fell back onto the pillow, a cool cloth pressed over my forehead.
    “The medication will work soon, and you’ll feel better.” The familiar voice was soft, and smothered my burning system with another layer of heat.
    Haithem , whoever and whatever he was.
    I draped my arm over my eyes and groaned. The cool cloth stung my skin. If I’d still believed I’d dreamed up the whole experience, this would be the part where it turned into a nightmare. This would be the part where smart girls ran. But my body groaned with heaviness, immobilized by fever, the roiling in my belly and pain in my joints—and something else, too. The tiny focused place inside me that was having a meltdown of its own.
    “Your temperature was extremely high, but it’s coming down. You’ll be all right.”
    I resisted the urge to rub my rump, where a stranger had jabbed a needle while speaking gibberish to Haithem. I let one eye slip free from the cover of my forearm and glanced at him. Bright red lines marred the skin on his neck, but the look on his face was even more haggard than the