Page 74 of Thorne
They don't get to judge my debt.
The realization of what I've done hits hard, stealing the air from my lungs. I didn't agree to a transaction; I signed a blank check. By telling him it was between us, I gave him permission to bypass every protocol, every boundary, and every shred of the professional distance he's supposed to maintain.
The realization is terrifying: a cold, sharp spike of fear that makes my hand tremble against the stylus. He hates me. He told me so with a voice like a whetstone while I was still vibrating from the pleasure he forced out of me.
He sees me as a ledger that can only be balanced with my destruction.
And yet, as I sit here at this table with the team moving around me, the arousal is a living thing in my blood. It's thick and suffocating, a dark undercurrent that flows beneath the fear.
I'm terrified of the next time the lock turns, of the next time he decides the debt needs a payment, yet I'm also starving for it.
I press my knees together, trying to stop the shaking, but the friction of the fabric against my sensitized skin only makes it worse. I'm carrying his mark, his weight, and the terrifying knowledge that I belong to a man who would gladly break me just to see if the pieces were still worth something.
The room is full of people. Halo is typing. Fuse is eating. Ghost is planning.
And I'm sitting in the middle of them, drowning in the secret I've built with the man at the end of the table who hates me.
Thorne shifts his weight. The tactical nylon of his vest creaks. The sound is like a gunshot in the quiet of the kitchen, and my head drops instinctively, my eyes fixed on the numbers I can no longer read.
Fuse drops into the chair across from me, a bowl of eggs in one hand and a map folded to the size of a paperback in the other. He doesn't look at me. Nobody looks at me directly. I have learned to exist at the edge of their peripheral vision: close enough to be monitored, far enough to be ignored. It is a workable arrangement.
"Talia's flight lands tonight." Fuse gestures vaguely with his fork, addressing no one in particular.
"Cassie's on the same one," Halo speaks from somewhere to my left. "She upgraded to first class and did not invite me."
"Smart woman." Torque reassembles something with a crisp mechanical click that sounds like a bone snapping back into place.
Fuse points at Halo with his fork. "You know what that means. We're going to need to reorganize the back."
"The back is fine." Halo doesn't stop typing, his eyes glued to the screen.
"The back is not fine. There are six of us in a building with three functional doors, and two of those lead to rooms currently occupied by a six-year-old and …" Fuse stops. Recalibrates. He doesn't look at the door to my cell, but the air in the room shifts. "And operational equipment."
I write another number. My hand feels heavy.
"Point being," Fuse continues, "we need to figure out which rooms are adjacent to which other rooms, because I am not spending three nights listening to Whisper?—"
"I'm right here." Whisper stands in the kitchen entrance, holding a mug and wearing an expression of sharp, specific warning.
"Have conversations. Through the wall. With his fiancée."
"Linguist." Whisper tilts his cup. "She's a linguist. We have a lot to talk about."
The room produces a sound that functions as laughter without actually being one: a collective exhale, a shift of shoulders, Halo's keyboard stopping for exactly two seconds.
"Eliza lands at six." Whisper addresses Ghost directly, back to professional. "She has the Phoenix signal transcriptions with her. She wants to sit down with the work. Tonight, if possible."
Ghost nods once.
Fuse is undeterred. "All I'm saying is. Thin walls. Let's be adults about this."
Thorne is looking at me when Fuse says it. The air in the room suddenly feels triple-thick. It's possessive, dark, and utterly focused.
Three seconds.
Then his gaze moves. Slow. Deliberate.
To the hall leading to the safe room.
