Not just literally.
Fuck.
"This doesn't change anything," he grits out through his teeth.
I tilt my head. "Beg your pardon?"
"This." He doesn't gesture because both his arms are occupied holding me against a wall. "Us. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. This doesn't change anything. We still hate each other."
I stare at him.
He stares back.
His knot throbs.
A grin splits my face so wide it hurts.
"Thank the gods," I say. "I was developing a blackmail kink."
Something happens to his face.
Not a smile. Rex doesn't smile. But the tension around his eye cracks. Splinters. His mouth twitches—the corner that can—and a sound comes out of him that's dangerously close to a laugh before he murders it.
"You're clinically insane," he says.
"Probably."
My phone buzzes. And buzzes again. I ignore it.
"So." I shift against the wall, trying to find a position that doesn't grind his tip directly against my cervix. There isn't one. "Since we're stuck here for... however long this takes..."
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"I knowexactlywhat you're going to say, and the answer is no."
"Rex." I reach up and place my fingertips against the temple of his mask. "We're rehearsing the stunt."
His eye flies open.
"Absolutely fucking not."
"You can't run away." I tap the mask with one finger.Clink."You can't put me down. You can't evenmovewithout your knot doing—" I clench. He snarls. "—that.You are, quite literally, a captive audience."
"Bells, I swear to every god that ever existed?—"
"Temple." My fingertip traces the first contact point. He flinches, but he can't jerk away without pulling both of us off balance, and his knot is still fat and locked inside me, which means any sharp movement is going to end badly for everyone.
"Cheekbone." Second contact.
"Don't youdare?—"
"Jaw."
I pull.
CHAPTER 26