Free Untouchable (The Blankenships Book 8) by Evelyn Glass

her lips. “He was interrupted by something. He was in the middle of not-exactly boasting about how he’d already ruined my life in the abstract, and look what he could do if he put his mind to it. He was completely monologuing. And then someone came in and whispered in his shoulder, and suddenly I was being hustled out of the room and back down into the car.”
     
    “Do you think that’s a good sign?” His hand slipped under the hem of the T-shirt, running up her stomach to trace the lower curve of her breast while she sighed into his hand. It felt soft, not demanding, the same sort of careful exploration and reconnection that she had been managing in exploring his mouth with her tongue.
     
    “I don’t know. Tanaka wants us alive, because regardless of what kind of nonsense he and my mother and whoever else might have been pulling with the stockholders, AEGIS is still a family business at the most relevant levels. The Board isn’t allowed to meet without a Blankenship at the helm, so with all of us gone—I don’t know what happens next, Zoey. I don’t think he can keep us here forever, but I don’t know how we get out of this.”
     
    She nodded, taking a deep breath of his warm scent, and then resolving to stick him in the shower at the earliest possible opportunity, because while he did smell like Alex, warm and spicy and strong, he also smelled like stale airplane and travel and nervous sweat. He could do lots better, and it was sounding more and more like they were going to be here for a while.
     
    Plus, there were tempting and delicious things she could do to him, and get him to do to her, in the shower. It sounded promising.
     
    But when she started to suggest the shower to him, there were two sharp cracks out in the hallway, the ugly explosions of pistols. She made a small shrieking sound and found herself dumped on the couch as Alex rushed to stand. “Get out of here,” he said, not looking at her. “Hide.”
     
    “No.”
     
    He tossed a glance at her as she stood. She expected the expression in his eyes to be angry, but no, he was afraid. He was terrified. “Zoey, I’m trying to protect you—”
     
    She nodded as she stepped closer, pushing aside the hand that was outstretched, palm tight, trying to cast a magic spell that would keep her safe. “I know. I promise, I know. But that’s the thing, Alex. I’m not safe. Neither are you. But we are in this together. We can survive this together.”
     
    That was the magic spell. That, right there, the thing she’d been looking for her entire life. He hesitated for one long moment, and then he twisted his fingers through hers—when had she reached out to him, when had she tried to take his hand too?—and pulled her tight against her side. “Whatever comes,” he said.
     
    “We’re together.”
     
    “Okay.”
     
    “I love you.”
     
    “If we survive this?”
     
    She glanced up at him, and that fear was still in his gaze, but there was more there, so very much more. “I am going to spank you for disobeying me.”
     
    Heat flared through her, giving her something to grip that was more than just terror. “Well then we’ll survive,” she said. “No question.”

 
     
    CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    Despite his bravado, turning to face the door with Zoey pressed up against his side was one of the most horrifying things Alex had ever done. He was positive that they were both about to die, and he was fairly sure, no matter what she said, that it would be his fault.
     
    He told himself that it wasn’t some kind of bullshit masculine protective urge. He’d seen more than enough death in the past few weeks, and the thought of more, of this woman he’d come to love dying in front of him, because of him, made everything inside of him twist in agony.
     
    But it was her choice to stand beside him, her right, and to push her away in that moment would be worse than killing her. He wouldn’t see her devalued and made less than, especially if