Chapter 35 · The Hold Doesn't Open

"Delete it." I grab the back of Dean's collar and yank him off the stool. "Right now. While I'm standing here."

He doesn't move his hand off the keyboard. The cursor's still blinking in the middle of my legal name, half a sentence about badge fraud sitting under it like a loaded gun nobody's fired yet.

"I said delete it, Rourke."

"I heard you." His voice is wrecked, gravel from three hours of biting and being bitten. He doesn't look at me. He looks at the screen like it's the only thing in the room he can still control. "I'm thinking."

"Think faster."

The bite on my shoulder is still hot, still leaking through the gauze I taped over it with one hand while he taped his with the other, both of us too proud to ask for help stitching what we'd done to each other. Mine's on his throat. His is on my collarbone. Matching, ugly, permanent. Neither of us has said the word mate out loud yet. Neither of us is going to.

I put my palm flat on his chest and shove. He doesn't budge — Dean Rourke weighs about two-twenty of pure command-post muscle and he plants like a wall does —