Page 94 of Oath

Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I raised my eyebrows. “You will?”

“Hell yes, I will. You have my word, Grace. No matter what we find, no matter how long it takes, wewillfind your sister.” His voice was low, steady, assured. He meant every single word. Alive or.. No. We would find her.

He said to focus on the positive. I could do that.

“Bones?” At his raised brows of inquiry, I asked, “What’s your real name?”

Amusement bled into his fierce expression, but he didn’t retreat from where he kept one hand in my hair, the other on my face. He kept me right there with him, but I didn’t want to run away. “Caylon,” he said. “Caylon Gwyar.”

I blinked. “That was the name on the passport at the hotel and on the card…”

He just hummed an affirmative.

Disbelief feathered through me. “You were using your real identity?”

“I wasn’t hiding from anyone, Dollface. That was you.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but snapped it closed when it hit me that he was absolutely correct. I had been the one who’d been trying to stay out of sight.

“Caylon,” I said slowly, testing the sound of it. Voodoo didn’t look like a Bryant to me, but Legend was definitely Legend and I wasn’t using Lunchbox again if I didn’t have to. But Caylon?

“You don’t like it?” More humor flickered in his eyes.

“I don’t hate it,” I promised him. “Just not sure I can think of you as Caylon. Do you prefer Bones to Caylon?”

He gave a shrug. “I’ve been Bones for over sixteen years. I don’t know that I’d remember to answer to ‘Caylon.’ Hell, Captain Gwyar sounds downright fucking odd to me.”

Leaning into his hand, I half-closed my eyes. “I’ll call you whatever you want,” I said. “I just… it felt weird not knowing.”

“Do you feel better now that you know?”

Lashes lifted, I met his gaze again. “I don’t know. It definitely doesn’t feel worse. Now I just have to figure out AB’s.”

His half-smile became a full one. “Would you like the intelligence, Dollface?”

I blinked again. “Doesn’t that break like some bro code or something to tell me?”

“No. It’s hardly classified. He just doesn’t like how much shit he used to get for his name. Hence Alphabet.”

Chewing on my lower lip, I turned that idea over in my head.

“If you want to know, Dollface, especially if it will help you feel better—he won’t mind.”

God, he sounded so absolutely certain. I wanted to be that certain. “I should wait for him to tell me. It seems only fair.”

“If you change your mind…” He left the offer to hang there, but the intensity in his eyes didn’t waiver. “Now, will you let me help you feel better?”

The husky offer stroked over my senses as deftly as his fingers caressed my cheek. I ran my tongue over my lower lip. “What did you have in mind?”

“You,” he answered in that same, low, heated voice. “Me.” Then he gave the room a sweep of a look before glancing back at me, The hunger suddenly blazing in his eyes sent shivers down my spine. There was nothing detached or distant about him.

“That’s—very basic.” It was actually a bit of a struggle to get those words out because the temperature in the room had gone from chilly to scorching in the space of a few seconds.

“I’m a basic kind of guy,” he said without a hint of irony. He reached for the blanket I had over my lap and peeled it away. Then he was tugging me forward by the hips—wait, no, by my pajama bottoms.

I’d put the penguin-decorated fleece pair on more for comfort than anything else. He swept his gaze over them even as he hooked his fingers into the elastic waistband.

“Penguins.” The dry intonation made me giggle.