Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [73]
“Be that as it may, we don’t have much else to go on. It might pay at least to sit him down and talk to him about it. See what information he, or the Order, can provide.”
“Good point. I’ll see if Catcher can set it up.”
A bolt of lightning crashed nearby, shaking the car. We both looked out the windows and up at the sky, clouds whirling across it.
“If this is a symptom,” I said, “a side effect, maybe we can find its heart?”
He looked over at me. “What do you mean?”
“The effect on the river stopped at the city limits, right? So it’s unlikely the sky is red everywhere. And if there are boundaries, maybe there’s also a center. An origin point.”
“Like a giant sucking tornado in the middle of the Loop?”
“Hopefully not that, but that’s the idea, yeah. If we can’t find the people responsible for this, maybe we can find their location. We can drive through different neighborhoods to see if there’s a focus, and we’ll cover more territory if we split up. If we find something, we can rally at that place?”
“That sounds like a decent plan,” Jonah said, but he made no move to get out of the car. Was he waiting on me to say something about what had happened in the tower? To offer thanks . . . or maybe vitriol?
I silently swore, and reminded myself that the point was what he’d done—not why he’d done it. “And thanks, by the way, for defending me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It’s part and parcel of being someone’s partner.”
“We aren’t partners yet,” I reminded him, thinking of the Red Guard.
“Aren’t we?” He gazed back at me, and it was clear he wasn’t thinking of the RG, but had something much more fundamental in mind. His eyes changed, and then his hand was behind my head and he was leaning toward me, pulling me toward him, and before I could stop him his lips were on mine, his mouth insistent.
Jonah kissed me with the intimacy of a lover and the confidence of a challenger to the throne, daring me to think outside the box I’d walled around me.
And for a moment, I let him.
It felt so good to be wanted, to be needed, to be desired by someone again. It hadn’t been that long since Ethan had been gone, but Ethan and I hadn’t been together long, if at all.
And the kiss was just . . . toe curling. Jonah wasn’t a novice, and he used every part of his body to his advantage, his fingers at my jaw, his tongue teasing mine, his body moving closer and closer, a suggestion of things he could offer: warmth; the solace of touch; another kind of intimacy.
But a shock of guilt turned my stomach. I wasn’t ready.
I pulled back and turned away, covering my mouth with a hand. It had been only a kiss, not initiated by me, and certainly no violation of any promise I’d made. But my lips were swollen, and my skin was flushed, and there was a ball of heat in the pit of my stomach. However unexpected it may have been, and however long Ethan may have been gone, my reaction felt like a betrayal to his memory.
“You’re not ready,” he quietly said.
“I’m not. I’m sorry—but I’m not.”
His next words surprised me nearly as much as the kiss had. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have pushed. It’s just—I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect to find a connection.”
I looked back at him again, my heart racing at the desire in his eyes and the sudden sense of panic that tightened my chest. “I am flattered, really, but—”
He held up a hand and smiled gently. “You don’t have to apologize. I took a chance, and the timing isn’t right. No harm, no foul.” He cleared his throat, then nodded confidently. “Let’s just forget the temporary humiliation and get back to work.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said with a nod, and pulled out his phone, a shiny gold wafer, to check in with Scott Grey. I did the same and sent a message to Kelley, advising her that we hadn’t discovered