Page 43 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Reaper

I’d spent four hours in the dark while Maeve slept.

More than anything, I wished I could be beside her—like I had been when she first fell asleep.

It was incredible how peaceful she was with the way she breathed.

The rest of the world around us was chaos, slowly unraveling to its ultimate demise, but somehow, it was just the two of us in this room.

We were the only ones that mattered—until Maeve was up, and we were back to our task.

Here and there, I found threads of peace, until, at last, I was forced to get up and return to the kitchen.

She needed rest. I, on the other hand, needed to work.

The laptop screen cast a harsh blue glow across my hands. My shoulders ached from hunching over the keyboard, but I didn’t shift position. Pain was irrelevant. What mattered was finding answers while Maeve recovered.

Every few minutes, my eyes flicked to the bedroom door. Still closed. The memory of Maeve falling asleep against me kept intruding—her head heavy on my chest, her breath warming my skin. I should have pushed it away. I didn’t. Instead, I let it linger, a distraction I once considered dangerous .

My fingers executed complex bypass protocols I had no memory of learning.

The disconnect unsettled me every time—my hands performing tasks while my mind watched like a stranger visiting someone else’s body.

Someone else’s knowledge, embedded beneath my consciousness, operating without my permission or understanding.

I cracked another security layer on the hard drives stolen from Brock’s facility. Terabytes of encrypted data—everything we needed to understand what happened to me. To locate Maeve’s brother.

Or nothing at all.

I should have woken her. The thought surfaced, only to be immediately countered by the image of her trembling hands yesterday, how she’d tried to hide them when she caught me watching.

I’d taken her when her body was still fighting Brock’s compounds—watched her come apart beneath me with a hunger that terrified me.

The hunger I’d felt—still felt burning under my skin—wasn’t a justification.

I cracked my neck and dove back in, trying to unravel the encryption.

“Shit,” I muttered when the system rejected my third attempt.

I paused, hands hovering above the keyboard.

Something felt wrong about this approach.

I closed my eyes, surrendering to whatever phantom knowledge waited beneath conscious thought.

My fingers moved without direction, executing an entirely different protocol—as though someone else controlled my hands .

An administrator login screen appeared. My hands typed a string that felt both foreign and familiar.

Access granted.

Something inside me knew things I didn’t.

The realization sent a familiar pain stabbing behind my eyes.

I swallowed against the pain, focused on the scrolling data.

Thousands of files appeared with only numeric designations—no names, no clear organization.

It was a deliberate maze designed to hide their secrets even from those with access, but I had no intention of stopping until I found what I needed.

A soft creak from across the room froze me mid-keystroke.

Maeve stood in the bedroom doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, hair wild from sleep, wearing my black t-shirt and nothing else.

The shirt swallowed her, hanging to mid-thigh, one side slipping to expose the curve of her shoulder.

Something primitive tightened low in my gut at the sight of her in my clothing—a visceral satisfaction I’d never experienced before.

“You started without me,” she said, voice rough with sleep. She slept well over ninety minutes, but she needed the rest, whether she realized it or not. She’d function better once she was well-rested and her body could heal quicker and more efficiently.

Still, that sleep-roughened voice slid down my spine like a physical touch, echoing how she’d sounded against my ear hours earlier, breathless and unraveling.

“You needed rest,” I answered, turning back to the screen to break whatever spell she cast just by standing there .

“And you needed help.” She crossed to me silently, but I tracked her approach by instinct—the subtle displacement of air, the lingering scent of sleep-warmed skin, and the soap we’d shared in the shower. “What have you found?”

When I looked up, the soft vulnerability in her expression hardened. Her gaze fixed on the screen, on evidence of hours spent working without her. The sleep-softness vanished, replaced by the razor-edged focus that had first drawn my attention in República Square.

By now, I hoped I would have found something concrete to present to her—something to give her hope, but there was nothing I could offer for now. Unfortunately. I didn’t even need to say the words out loud—it was as if she could sense them without any indications on my end.

“You should have woken me,” she said, voice cooling several degrees. “This isn’t how partnerships work.”

“You needed rest.” I deliberately kept my eyes from tracking down her bare legs—the discipline it required surprised me. “The compounds in your system...”

“I don’t need you to decide when I should rest.” Maeve dropped into the chair beside mine, her anger radiating with nearly physical heat. When she reached for the laptop, I moved it away—a reflex as automatic as breathing.

“Your body is still processing unknown chemical compounds,” I said, meeting her glare. “That’s not emotional—it’s tactical.”

“Tactical?” Her eyebrows arched dangerously. “Is that what you call making unilateral decisions now? ”

“I call it efficiency.” I gestured to the screen, voice cooler than I actually felt—something in me stirring in response to the flash in her eyes. “You were compromised. I was functional.”

“Compromised?” Maeve’s laugh lacked any humor, sharp enough to draw blood. “I was sleeping, not in a coma. There’s a difference between protection and control.”

“I wasn’t controlling.”

“Then what do you call this?” She sliced her hand through the air between us, leaning close enough that I could see the individual flecks of gold in her irises.

“Risk management.” The words tasted artificial in my mouth, programming rather than truth. “You wanted to find your brother. I’m trying to help.”

“By excluding me from the process?”

“By letting you recover.”

“Bullshit.” She surged to her feet, stepping deliberately into my space until the heat from her body registered on my skin.

I couldn’t fully understand where this sudden wave of anger had come from, but I suspected it could have something to do with the compound in her body.

Everyone reacts differently, so she may have become more irritable because of it.

With that in mind, I also knew there was no point in bickering with her.

“You don’t get to decide what I can and cannot do,” she said finally, jabbing a finger in my direction.

I rose to meet her, our bodies separated by inches of charged air.

The proximity changed something in my blood—her anger and fierce determination only sharpening the effect.

Something primitive recognized her challenge and wanted to answer it, to back her against the nearest wall until her anger burned into something else entirely.

“Someone has to,” I said, my voice dropping lower. “Your mind is barely your own now that you’re recovering, Maeve.”

“Not you.”

“Who then?”

“Me.” She jabbed a finger hard against my sternum, again, and the brief contact sent a current through my system that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with hunger. “I decide my limits. Not Brock. Not you. Me.”

The air between us felt electrified, every breath drawing her scent deeper into my lungs. Her anger carried its own scent—cinnamon and adrenaline, a combination that hit my bloodstream like a drug.

“You still have tremors,” I said, voice softening despite myself.

“I still have agency.” Her eyes challenged mine, pupils dilated with anger and something darker. “Your concern doesn’t override my choice.”

“Your safety...”

“Isn’t your sole responsibility. I survived before you.”

“Barely.”

“But I did.” She held her ground with a fierceness that made something in my chest tighten. “I’m not some asset to be managed. I’m your partner. ”

Partner. The word hooked into something deep in my chest. Not an asset. Not collateral. Not the target. Partner. Equal.

She read the shift in my expression, her own softening fractionally.

“We decode these files together.”

Before I could answer, she erased the space between us and pressed her mouth against mine—hard and deliberate, a demand rather than a request. My hands found her waist by instinct, pulling her against me until her body aligned perfectly with mine.

The anger between us ignited, transforming to heat that burned through my veins as her mouth demanded a response.

I felt her heartbeat quicken, matching the sudden acceleration of my own. My fingers dug into her hips, wanting to lift her, carry her back to bed, finish this argument in a way that would leave us both breathless and spent.

When she broke away, her eyes were bright with challenge and desire. A flush had climbed her neck to stain her cheeks, her pupils blown wide with the same hunger clawing at my restraint. “Are we clear?”

I didn’t apologize—wouldn’t apologize for wanting to protect her—but I nodded once.

“Crystal,” I answered, hands still gripping her hips like I couldn’t trust myself to let go.

Maeve stepped back but stayed close. She turned to the computer, absently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. The casual intimacy of the gesture hit me with unexpected force—this small, feminine movement from someone who just faced me down without flinching. “So what have you found so far?”