Chapter 14 · The Send Line

"Don't," I said, and my voice came out wrong. Rough. Like it scraped skin on the way up.

Dean's hand stayed where it was. Two inches over the bite mark on my throat, close enough I could feel the heat coming off his palm like a stove left on. He didn't move it closer. He didn't pull it back either.

"I'm not doing anything," he said.

"You're doing exactly this." I racked the taser higher, right under his jaw, and he still didn't blink. "Standing there. Not touching me. Making me the one who has to decide."

"Ellis—"

"You want it, take it. Don't hover." My arm shook on the taser, not from weakness. From how close his mouth was to a spot on my neck that hadn't stopped burning since the first bite.

His jaw ticked. Muscle jumping under two days of stubble. "You'd drop me for that."

"Try me."

The board screen behind him lit up green and chimed twice, that stupid cheerful double-beep the system uses for outgoing mail, and both of us turned at the same second, like two dogs hearing the same whistle.

QUEUED — 1 FILE — DEST: ALL PRECINCT COMMAND

SENDER: D. ROURKE #4471

SUBJECT: C-FILE — WARD, E. — BIOLOGICAL STATUS

I stopped breathing for a second.