Chapter 545 | The Davenport Variable

Chapter 545: 545 | The Davenport Variable

Her mouth opened and then closed again. Her ears went pink at the tips, which was the closest thing Blair Davenport had to a confession.

"I check the boards every hour," she said. "That’s called diligence."

"Sure it is. So what’s our ranking right now?"

"Fourth," she said through her teeth, "for now, and only until Sapphire runs their next gate."

"Fourth means top five, Blair."

"I know what fourth means. I’m not one of your lottery idiots who needs a spreadsheet to count."

She turned to leave, which was her move every time a conversation got close to anything real. I didn’t grab her. I’d learned that grabbing Blair Davenport led to second-degree burns and lectures about personal space. I just said her name once, low and level, and she stopped walking like I’d thrown a rope around her ankle.

"You told me in the cave you’d make me wear a collar," I said. "You had a whole list, and you said some of those things out loud while your thigh was between my legs."

She went rigid. The deck under her boots hissed where the spray hit it and turned to steam instantly.

"That never happened," she said without turning around. "We agreed it never happened, Monroe."

"I agreed to forget it. I never agreed to stop thinking about it."

She spun on her heel so fast her coat flared out behind her. She closed the meter between us in two long strides and jabbed one finger into my chest, right over the leopard scars, hard enough that the bruised ribs underneath sang. Her finger burned through my shirt like a cigarette tip. Up close, her pupils had swallowed most of the ice blue, and her breath came quick and shallow against my chin.

"You don’t get to say that to me," she hissed. "You don’t get to stand there smelling like Fox and her shampoo and tell me you think about me."

"Why not?"

"Because I have to stand next to you at six in the morning and pretend I don’t remember what your mouth tastes like."

She heard herself say it a full second after the words left her mouth. I watched it land on her face in slow motion. Her finger stayed on my chest, but the heat behind it changed from punishment into something that made my pulse thud in my ears.

"Blair," I said.

"Shut up."

"You remember what my mouth tastes like."

"I said shut up, you insufferable lottery parasite."

She kissed me before I could answer. She grabbed the front of my shirt in both fists and dragged me down to her height, and her mouth hit mine hard enough to bruise. She tasted like the expensive French water she always carried and something hot underneath it that made my head spin. Her lips were feverish against mine, and when I put my hand on the small of her back, the wool of her coat felt almost too warm to touch.

This kiss was nothing like the cave. In the cave she had kissed me from the textbook, perfect and stiff and terrified. Now she kissed me like she’d spent two weeks studying for an exam and wanted to prove she’d done the homework. She tilted her head and opened her mouth, and her tongue slid against mine with zero hesitation. Her fingers twisted tighter in my shirt until the collar strangled me a little, and I absolutely did not care.

I pressed her back against the rail and she let me. Her hips met mine through all that wool and denim, and she made a sound into my mouth that I wanted to bottle and keep in the Vault forever. Steam rolled off the railing behind her in thick clouds. My hand slid up her spine to the back of her neck, under her hair, and I felt her pulse hammering against my palm.

The ninth ring in my skull stopped flickering. For three full seconds, it burned steady and hot and white.

Then the ferry hit a swell. The deck tilted, cold spray exploded over the stern rail, and seawater drenched both of us from the shoulders down.

Blair jerked back from me with a strangled noise. The water hissed off her coat in a cloud of steam so thick I lost sight of her face for a moment. When it cleared, she was standing two meters away with her hair plastered to her forehead and her chest heaving. Her lips were swollen and red. She looked like someone had just shown her a photo of herself doing something illegal.

"That didn’t happen," she said, and her voice shook. "That also didn’t happen."

"The ocean saw it, Blair."

"The ocean can keep its mouth shut, and so can you." She pointed a trembling finger at me, and tiny blue flames licked up from the nail. "If anyone hears about this, I will burn every shirt you own, including the ones Fitzgerald bought you."

"Belle keeps stealing those, so you’d have to go through her first."

"I will go through Fox. I will go through all of them."

A notification blinked in the corner of my vision. I didn’t even need to read it, because the ninth ring was screaming the number at me. Blair Davenport, Devotion thirty-nine percent. Status still read three question marks, but the question marks looked a lot less confident than they had this morning.

Blair turned and walked toward the cabin door. She stopped with her hand on the handle and didn’t look back at me.

"We’re fourth," she said quietly. "If we hold fourth through winter, I’ll lose the bet."

"You’ll win the bet," I corrected. "You just won’t win the half you think you wanted."

The handle under her hand glowed orange and warped a little. She yanked the door open and vanished inside, and the door slammed hard enough to rattle the window glass.

I stayed at the rail for another minute, mostly because walking would have been a problem. I licked my lips and tasted salt and French water and Blair. The graft behind my sternum pulsed slow and smug, like a cat that had just knocked a glass off a table and watched it shatter.

When I finally went back inside, Belle looked up from her laptop. Her eyes went straight to my wet shirt, then to the scorched handprint on the cabin door, and then to Blair, who sat in the far corner with her face turned to the window and her ears glowing like stovetop burners.

Belle typed something. I heard the keys click with a terrible kind of joy.

"New tab," she said without looking up. "I’m calling it Davenport Variable, and you’re going to explain the door later."

"There’s nothing to explain about the door."

"There’s always something to explain, Monroe, and I’m the one who sets the rate."

Jordan cracked one eye open on his bench, looked at me, looked at Blair, and closed his eye again. "I’m not betting on this one," he mumbled. "I’ve lost enough money to your love life today."

I sat down next to Naomi. She shifted in her sleep without waking and slid sideways until her head landed on my shoulder. Her hand found mine on the seat between us and squeezed once. Her shell necklace pressed cool against my arm through the damp fabric.

"You smell like ocean," she murmured into my sleeve, still mostly unconscious. "And you smell like Belle’s shampoo and something burnt."

"The deck got hot," I told her.

"Liar," she whispered, and she fell back asleep with a tiny smile on her face.