The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,91

noodles, frozen pizza, and sock on the door when Kimba gets lucky.

“Nix, could I have a minute?” Maxim asks, not looking up from his laptop.

Kimba and I share a cautious glance. He’s been great about keeping his hands to himself, and other than the occasional I love you thiiiis much stare, discreet.

“Uh, sure.” I wave Kimba on. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling knowingly. “See you at home.”

I’m the last one in the office, and it feels strange to be completely alone with Maxim after a month or so of always making sure someone is around. We’ve shared a few stolen kisses, but we’ve been too busy for much more. Maxim still has a business to run, even though he’s delegated as much as he can.

“Could you close the door?” he asks, his glance still glued to his screen.

“Uh, I’m not sure we should—”

“Close it.” His voice is commanding, like I haven’t heard in so long. My nipples respond immediately to the rough tone, beading up under my shirt as if he’s licked them with his tongue instead of his sharp words.

I take a seat across the conference room table and wait. He clicks for a minute or so more and then closes the laptop. “Sorry. Jin Lei doesn’t care about town halls or pop-ups. She wants me to get these Hong Kong investors off her back. She’s on her way.”

He stands abruptly, crosses over to the door I closed, and locks it.

“Doc,” I say, a warning in my voice. “We’ve done so well, and this is definitely not the place.”

“I hear you. We don’t have to Tuesday, but we need to talk.”

“Okay. What’s going on?”

“Glenn.” He slits his eyes. “He’s a problem.”

I release a relieved breath and a little laugh. “Gosh, you had me worried. How is Glenn a problem? He’s a great speechwriter, which you’d know if you’d actually stick to any of his speeches.”

“He’s into you.”

“You’re reading things that aren’t there. We’re friends. We’ve known each other a long time. This is our fifth campaign together.”

“He called you Nix.”

Which is apparently the equivalent of first base in Maxim’s calculus. “He doesn’t know. How would he know not to call me Nix?”

“Somehow, magically, no one else does when they hear me call you that. Only him. Only Glenn.”

“It’s your imagination. We’ve worked together for years, and he’s never tried anything.”

Maxim reaches across the table and covers both of my hands with one of his. He pins me with the intensity of his stare. Even though it’s over something silly, I bask in his undivided attention when there always seems to be something vying for it these days. Right now, I have him all to myself, completely focused on me, and I forgot how good it feels.

“If he touches you,” Maxim says, his tone dangerous because it’s so matter-of-fact, “he’s fired. And do not try to keep it from me. I’ll find out.”

“How? From the security that I’m not supposed to know is there, but I do know is there?”

“You agreed to the conditions. We can’t let our guards down while Gregory’s still on the loose.”

With Maxim doing so well in the polls for an independent, it’s easy to forget there’s someone out there who wants to kill us. I hope Gregory isn’t simply lulling us into a false sense of security, then striking when we least expect it.

“Any leads?” I ask.

“Grim thinks the CamTech rat is our best option.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s why he makes the big bucks,” Maxim says, his grin coming and going before I have time to enjoy the warmth of it.

“That’s the only person we know had some form of contact with Gregory when the vaccine information was leaked to him. We find the rat, then we break the rat, which Grim is very good at, by the way.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, and is Wallace helping?”

He glances up, grimaces, rolls his eyes.

“Be nice,” I say, chuckling.

“Yeah, Wallace and the CamTech team are cooperating.”

He stands and comes to sit on the edge of the conference room table, pulling me up to stand between his legs.

“I don’t want to talk about your ex-boyfriend,” he says, ghosting his lips over mine. “Let’s talk about your current one.”

I don’t hesitate, opening for him, as hungry as he is for any crumb, a kiss, a touch. Our love felt so vast in Wyoming, as wide and sprawling as the sky. Now it feels compact, reduced to the minutiae of a few crumb-kisses, stolen