this. How I desperately wish I could change my mind, but that’s not possible. Not right now. I don’t trust Arden and Veronica by a fucking inch. Even a fraction of one. Arden’s a snake. An ambassador of hell itself.
So like it or not, she’s stuck with me. And everyone will just have to deal with it.
“Maximus.”
“Hmm?”
“Maybe you should stop and think about this.”
I start the engine. “I appreciate that, beautiful—especially because I know the place in your heart that it’s coming from.”
“If you really knew that, you’d be stopping and thinking.” Her tone points to her persistent worry.
I turn my focus back to the GPS screen in place of kissing away the little V between her eyebrows. Damn, the woman is hot when she’s fretting. “Done all the thinking I want or need to.” Like the engine warming to a roar beneath the truck’s hood, my blood heats with the heritage that it’s been too long denied. The legacy from Olympus. The spirit of a king. It feels good to let that pedigree flow a little more freely. “Who knows? I might even prove useful on your grand treasure hunt.”
“You mean by being the best treasure in the room?”
Her flattery doesn’t fall on deaf ears. I swoop toward her with a fast but passionate dip of my lips. I don’t even mind that a persistent pap has found his way into my complex’s garage to snap us in the clinch—until a separate flash joins the first.
I snap my head around. Once I spy the two men there, the electrocution takes over every hair on the back of my neck—just like it threatened to do over the weekend when I saw the same pair in the bar at Yamashiro.
But in the two seconds I take to glance back at Kara, the photographers have rushed away, probably to the garage’s deeper level. “Did you see those guys?” A useless query and I already know it, which doesn’t stop me from going on. “One of them had a beach bum smirk and a glitchy walk. The other stared at me like a goddamned wolf.”
Kara releases half a laugh. “That’s a pretty specific observation, even for you.”
“That’s because I’ve seen them before.”
“Very likely,” she says. “Lots of the guys cover the same beats. Some of them have been snapping Jaden, Kell, and me for years.”
“Any of those guys stare at you like you just fell from heaven?”
Her smile fades. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
She settles back into her seat with a heavy sigh. “I also don’t think we should try to be late,” she mutters with gentle firmness.
I roll my shoulders to shake off the paranoia—which is all it is, damn it. Instead of looking for false monsters around every corner, I’ve got to support Kara in facing the real one a few miles away. As I head toward Wilshire on our journey toward Beverly Hills, I use stoplight pauses to sneak glances across the truck’s cab. Kara’s expression is stoic. She taps a finger on the armrest in time to the song on the radio. This clearly isn’t her ideal way to spend the afternoon either, but she’s being brave about all of it. Admirably so.
Despite my frustration with the situation, I’m proud as hell to be by her side. She inspires me. I tell her so by reaching a steadfast hand to her knee. I back up the action with a determined murmur. “You’re the most courageous person I know, Kara.”
She molds her hand across the top of mine. “Except I’m not wholly a person, Maximus.”
“By that definition, neither am I. But here I am, wondering how I’m going to keep my hands to myself for the next few hours.”
Her answering grin matches my heated energy. “Why don’t you just use them in some fantasies instead?”
“Now there’s an idea.”
“But if you do, you have to promise me one thing,” she murmurs.
“Just one?”
“You have to pay careful attention, because there’ll be a quiz later.”
I answer with a low chuckle. “On my fantasies?”
“Maybe not a quiz,” she amends. “I’d call it more of a…long-form exam. Really long. It’ll probably require us pulling an all-nighter.”
I kick up one side of my mouth. “So you’ll need to stay over. Maybe for quite a while.”
“Well, that’s a given.”
“And what kind of special notes are you allowing for this test?”
“Notes?” She lets out a cute psssh. “Who said anything about notes?”
I flick over a playful glare. “Is that fair?”
As soon as she turns in