Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,6

“Yes, Ollie. It’s too much.”

“I’m—” I began.

Olive didn’t argue with me or say anything further. Instead, I felt a prick, the slight sting of morphine hitting my system, and the pain immediately edged back.

“Thanks,” I murmured, giving in that I’d needed the relief, even as my eyes drifted to Ava’s.

She continued to hold on to me, fingers gripping my shoulder firmly. It was the most innocuous contact, and paired with a bone-deep ache across my chest and back, I knew I shouldn’t be so aware of it, shouldn’t be feeling it so intensely, as though those fingers were reaching into my soul and holding me in place.

And that was the morphine talking.

She shifted slightly, her fingers brushing along the bare skin of my arm. Her skin wasn’t silken, or at least not the skin on her hands. I’d felt silken skin in other places, but that covering her fingers and palm was calloused and work-worn, slightly rough against the back of my biceps.

Hers were the hands of action, of a woman who worked hard and put her life on the line at regular intervals.

I fucking loved her hands.

I wanted them to stay on my skin. No, I wanted her hand to drift lower. Or better, to gesture Laila and Olive out of the room and to let both of her hands do some investigating.

Further that, if I were making a list of all the things I was wanting, I wanted to not be wounded, to be back at my cabin in Georgia, for her to be touching me because she’d decided to let me into those walls and because she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.

That she wanted my body. No. That she wanted more. To see inside me. To allow me to help her carry every old hurt, every painful memory. Fuck, I’d take her just wanting my body, because at least I would have part of her again.

Even if it was a small part. Even if it was the only—

Another tug, another pulse of pain had me jumping.

“Sorry,” Olive said. “I’m almost done.”

My list of wants dissipated as I swallowed hard, my stomach churning, the black intruding on the edges of my vision again. Fuzziness intruded on my thoughts, my tongue feeling thick and furry, my fingertips tingling. I found it suddenly difficult to make my lips form words as a pleasant floating feeling descended through me.

“You’re not going to yak, are you?” Ava’s question made me blink rapidly, struggling to focus.

But then that focus narrowed to her, to her fingers on my skin, to her pretty brown hair that was the color of . . . “Mud,” I said, my mouth feeling like it was packed with cotton.

“Mud?” she asked.

I nodded, felt my head spin in the process, and reached up to press at my temples. Maybe that would stop the whirling.

“What’s mud?” she pressed.

More blinking. More temple pressing. “What?”

A sigh. “Dan, what’s the deal with the mud?”

“Your hair,” I said. “It’s so pretty—”

Ava’s eyes drifted over my shoulder. “How much morphine did you give him?”

“Too much, apparently,” Olive said. “He never takes the stuff. I formulated the dose for his weight.”

“Light bones,” I told them.

“What?” they both asked.

“I’m a light bones.”

“Lightweight,” Ava said. “I think you mean lightweight.”

“Yes, that.” I nodded again, and it was really hard to get my head back up. “I’m a lightweight, and your hair is the color of mud, and it’s so pretty, and—”

Ava’s gaze darted back to mine.

“—and I want to touch it.”

Her eyes widened, lips parting.

And I passed out.

Four

KTS Satellite Headquarters

Munich, Germany

01:46hrs local time

Ava

Holding the hulking mass of muscle against me so he wouldn’t tumble off the table and hit the tile floor, I turned my head toward Laila and lifted a brow.

“Mud?”

My friend, and perhaps the single person on the planet who knew why I hid my emotions behind thick, protective walls, grinned. “But it’s so pretty.”

“Shut up, you,” I muttered.

Laila giggled and glanced back at the computer screen, where she was going through the USB we’d recovered. The files had already been encrypted and sent to KTS’s main headquarters, where they would be gone over with a fine-tooth comb by a team that specialized in this kind of data. But we wouldn’t be good agents if we just sent off intel without learning every bit of information we could. Each agent had some technical capabilities, and while we might not be able to compete with the tech team on all levels, we could hold