In the morning, I wake to find myself in an empty bed. I’m not wearing anything, and I have no idea where August is at first. Did everything I remember from last night seriously happen? It makes me flush even just thinking about it. Never in a million years would I have expected Alpha to actually want to be with me. I’ve always thought of him as off-limits, incapable of physical touch. Even after what happened in the safe house, I wasn’t sure.
And now he’s gone.
But when I sit up, I can see that August is just sitting at the glass table, the cigar case open next to him. He’s scrolling through the manifest on a burner phone. The expression on his face is calm and steady as usual, and he’s simply focused on the files before him. There’s a backpack on the couch, as well as weapons and a change of clothes for both of us. I don’t want to interrupt him while he’s working.
But I have to know if everything between us is real.
“August—”
He turns to look at me, finally realizing that I’m awake. Without hesitating, he comes over to the bed and lowers himself onto the mattress beside me, the sheets rustling around us. August is warm and shirtless, and my heart is pounding so loudly that he has to hear it.
“Eliza,” he says, the word filled with meaning, as if also checking to see whether I’m solid and real and not just a dream.
“Say it again,” I breathe, trailing my fingers down his arm.
“Eliza.”
I can feel him becoming hard again. The look in his eyes is so yearning and intense that I can’t believe I doubted for even a second whether everything that happened last night was real. It was real, and this is real, and none of it is a dream or a fantasy. When he moves against me, I know this is real. When he kisses my face, my shoulder, my ribcage covered with bruises, I know this is real.
And when he’s inside me again, making my pupils dilate and my body shiver with pleasure, I know this is real.
Afterward, as I lie against August’s chest and he holds me close, I ask, “What are we going to do now?”
“Whatever we want,” he says. “The Executive will retire us if we go back.”
“I know,” I say. “But all those children...”
He kisses my head, his lips brushing against my hair. “Now that we have the manifest, Mongoose can start finding these kids before they’re sent to Ophidian or any of the Executives. We’ll save all of them together. And we’ll stay like this, as partners in every sense of the word, for as long as we want.”
But I’m thinking of the characters in the comic book. January can control the poison on her lips, enough that she can safely kiss September, but I’ll never be able to do that. I can stay with August without ever kissing him, but can he do the same?
“But are you sure?” I ask him.
He glances down at me. “About what?”
“Being my partner.” I have to make myself say it. “I might accidentally kill you—”
“I accept the risk, Eliza,” he says. “I’ve always accepted it.”
“But I can never kiss you, and you can never kiss me.”
August is silent for a long moment. Finally, he says, “I started seeing certain things with my X-ray vision a long time ago. Things that made me question the Executive, that allowed me to eventually discover what was going on with Ophidian. I decided to run away, and I almost went through with it. But I stayed because it was going to be your birthday, and then I stayed because you were sad, and then I stayed because you wanted to read another comic book, and that was when I realized I couldn’t live without you. I started seeing a counselor to deal with what happened to me as a kid. I formed Mongoose to turn the Executive into the idealistic protector you believed it was. Everything I have done is for you, and I will always be your partner.” Then he raises an eyebrow. “And who says I can’t kiss you?”
August plants a kiss on my nose and I let out a surprised laugh, the lump of emotion in my throat melting away into giddy happiness. Before I even realize what’s happening, he’s kissing the curve of my throat with such gentleness that I can feel every inch of my body responding to him. And then he’s kissing my breasts, and my inner thighs, and my belly, tracing circle after circle down my body until his lips are meeting the center of me, sending a wave of desire shuddering underneath my skin. His tongue is so steady, his fingers coaxing me toward him with such deliberation, that I find myself wrapping my fingers in his hair without ever wanting to let go. He makes me tremble with want. He makes me gasp with delight.
He makes me absolutely scream.
“Is that enough of a kiss for you?” August asks when he’s finished, catching the palm of my hand in another kiss.
I nod, gasping, still coming down from the high. But that’s when he pauses and frowns slightly, glancing downward. Not at the bed, but through the floor itself, possibly all the way to the street. I watch as Alpha climbs to his feet and gazes all around him, using his X-ray vision to look at multiple points outside the hotel. From the expression on his face, it won’t be anything good.
“What is it?” I ask, already shifting back into the mindset of Echo.
“The local police,” he says. “The Executive sent out a bulletin last night. Someone must have reported us when I went out for supplies.”
Following his lead, I climb out of bed and get dressed quickly, pulling on a new shirt and pair of shorts. As August shoulders the backpack, I throw open the doors to the balcony above the lake. Enough people are dotting the water that we’ll blend in, and there’s an unoccupied motorboat in the distance we can try to use. It doesn’t matter where we go, as long as we have the manifest and each other. I can already hear shouting in the hallway, the police yelling for us to open the door.
I follow August up onto the railing of the balcony, as if we’re about to plunge into a swimming pool together instead of a lake. He offers me his hand and I instinctively take it. We’re high up enough that I’m almost afraid to jump, but his touch is comforting even in the midst of all this.
“So I guess this is our thing now,” I say teasingly, referring to when we jumped off the dock to escape from Ophidian.
“One of our many things,” August says, the penetrating look in his dark eyes indicating that he’s remembering the numerous things we’ve done in the shower, on the bed, all over the hotel room, since last night.
I flush inadvertently, and it only seems to make his expression that much more intense. But we don’t have time for anything else, and when I turn to the lake below, it still looks insanely deep. And yet all of that just fades out of my mind, the same way all those memories and targets have faded from my mind, when I look over at the man standing next to me. Everyone else in the world could disappear right now and I wouldn’t even notice. All I can see is August, his eyes reassuring me with the knowledge that my partner, my protector, my lover, wants to be with me as much as I want to be with him. I never have to get close to a target again, and I never have to kiss anyone I don’t want to.
We’re in this together.
“Ready?” I ask him.
“Ready,” he says.
And for the first time since we met all those years ago, August smiles.