Quanta’s lips pressed together as she tried not to smile.

Adorable.

The expression evaporated as soon as it had appeared. She scowled again, clearly seeing something she didn’t like. “You are not going to break me, Altair Orpheus.”

I stole another piece of fruit from her bowl. “I wasn’t planning on it.” Unless she counted breaking her out of here.

“Plans never go the way we want them to.” Before I could answer, she stood, knocking back her chair. “I need to go shoot things now.”

She wrinkled her nose a little as she waited for me to open the door.

As we strode down the hall, she clutched her arms to her stomach, avoiding me by staring straight ahead. She’d probably be picturing my face at the center of her targets.

I just wished I knew why.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

QUANTA

Tair annihilated me on the sim and for once, I didn’t give a flying fudge reindeer.

The timeghosts had gotten bored of kissing and now I was getting full-on caressing, nudity, and a soundtrack of bedroom moans. And I couldn’t not peek. Not when Tair looked that good shirtless, his head tipped back, sucking a breath through his teeth as I—

Whoa horsies.

I shuddered and leaned against the sim room wall. I could not be expected to focus under these conditions.

Especially when us getting together was looking more and more likely. Short of knocking him unconscious with one of the prop crossbows, it might be too late to derail the train to make-out town. One kiss wouldn’t be so bad, but—

No. That was the problem right there. It would be a gateway kiss. Then there’d be tongue and heavy breathing and feelings. I needed to nip that right in the bud. Because after the kissing came all the dying.

The most annoying part was that Tair was totally oblivious to the chaos in my head.

“Should I take you back to your room?” Tair set his guns back on the shelf. “Your pulse is high.”

“Well, it would be,” I snapped. That happened when I got bombarded with images of him nipping my collarbone and running his hands all over me, because then I imagined what it would feel like in real life and Jesus Christmas. What was I supposed to do about that?

“Did I do something wrong?” He crouched near me, not close enough to make me uncomfortable, but close enough that I could see the golden shades of brown in his eyes, and that was uncomfortable in a whole different way.

I’d made a mistake. This was the most annoying part. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

Tair was playing his part to perfection. I was the one getting blown apart.

Getting thrown off my game.