Page 17 of Saxon

Which are many, varied, and probably all sorts of sinful.

This is highly unusual. Am I in possession of a preternaturally and perpetually high-octane sex drive? Yes, abso-fuckin'-lutely. Do I normally think about sex in high-stress, super scary situations? No, nope, no way, nuh-uh, never. And I've been in way too many of those.

"You think too fuckin' loud," Saxon says in that leopard growl voice of his.

"What? What do you mean?" I opt for acting dumb. Not a task requiring too much acting, some would say, perhaps, and to them, I say fuck you. I may not be book smart, but I ain't stupid.

I do have a mental process that somewhat resembles a run-on sentence mixed with a trainwreck. Sue me—I've got a lot of thoughts. You ever see that meme that says something like, "Men, you wanna know what a woman's brain is like? Imagine a browser with 4321 tabs open all the time." That's me.

"I mean, I can hear you overthinking shit back there." He tosses this over his shoulder as he strides with his thousand-foot-long legs down the service corridor, requiring me to half-trot to keep up.

"Okay, number one, can we keep in mind that my legs aren't half a mile long, and I'm not wearing shoes? Two, it's what I do. I drink and overthink things."

"And you're about the same height as Tyrion Lannister," he quips.

"Shut up. I'm not short, I'm fun-sized."

"That shit always bugged me. Someone gives you a tiny packet of M&Ms with like four pieces of candy in it, and they call it fun-sized. Like what the fuck is fun about four M&Ms? I want the whole goddamn party bag. Fuck off with your fun-sized bullshit."

I can't quite suppress a snicker—mainly because I don't try. "Well, Saxon, why don't you tell me how you truly feel? Also, I wouldn't have pegged you for a Game of Thrones fan."

"I have a good bit of downtime in my job. My brothers and I watched it all."

I eye him. "How many brothers do you have?"

He doesn't answer for a moment as we come to an intersection in the service corridor, and he contemplates which way to go. He chooses left, at random it seems to me. Correctly, it turns out, as we come to a service elevator.

"I have two brothers." He tilts his head. "Well, two biological brothers, and five chosen brothers."

"Chosen brothers?" I query.

He glances at the panel of the elevator where the buttons should be and quickly discovers that you need a keycard.

"Shit." He huffs in annoyance. "Stairs, or steal a keycard?"

"Do I get a vote?" I ask.

He smirks at me. "No. I know what you'll pick."

My silent glare is—if I do say so myself—quite icy. After a moment, I quirk an eyebrow. "And which is that, pray tell?"

He seems oblivious to his imminent danger. “You’d want to steal a keycard. Eighteen flights of stairs barefoot?"

"My bare feet are the only reason, huh?"

He stares at me without expression. "I feel like you're assuming I'm assuming something negative about you."

I feel like an idiot, now. There's no graceful way of exiting this predicament because he's right. I automatically assumed he was making an assumption about my weight and/or build. Or height. Or cardiovascular endurance. Or all of the above. Mainly because I'm making that assumption about myself and attributing it to him.

I hear a female voice having a one-sided conversation in a language I don't recognize. I point at Saxon. "Sit. Stay."

He lifts an eyebrow. "Woof."

I snicker, and then let out a deep breath, shake my hands out, and roll my shoulders. I launch into my tried-and-true creep test: pretend to be drunk and see if the dude I'm considering smashing will take advantage of me.

I stumble and lurch out of the elevator mumbling out loud—it's more gibberish than anything, but it's based on a long section of dialogue from my favorite go-to comfort guilty pleasure movie, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which I've long since memorized. I just mumble the whole thing under my breath in a slurred voice, eyes half-closed and mostly crossed.

I spot my target ten or so yards down the hallway, pushing one of those carts they use for turning over a room. She's white, on the older side of middle-aged, and has an unlit cigarette between the fingers of one hand and a cell phone pinched between ear and shoulder, into which she jabbers rapidly in…Russian? Something Slavic? I don't know.