She felt him, felt connected to him. Even now, running for their lives, she could feel him worrying. She knew he was scared for her, worried about her, and that through it all he couldn’t help his desire for her, his need for her. And that was the sweetest thing of all. She wasn’t unaware of how she looked. The guys she’d dated had made it clear they found her beautiful. But with Stone, she felt more than beautiful. Something in the way he looked at her, touched her, kissed her, made love to her—it was like he needed her in a bone-deep way. Like she was his breath, and he’d been denied it for far too long.
It was how she felt, too. Like she’d never really been alive until now. Like she’d never really taken a breath until his kiss imparted oxygen to her starved lungs.
Stone skidded to a stop, and she smacked into his back, disrupting her thoughts. He pulled her to the side, pressed her back against a wall and buried his face in her neck. She felt the tension coursing off of him, sensed the danger in the air.
“Focus on me. Don’t look around.” His voice was a barely-audible murmur.
Wren pressed her nose to his scalp; he smelled like hotel shampoo and sweat. She let her hands scrape over the inch-long stubble on his head, soft yet prickly against her palm, trying to broadcast the image of heedless passion.
She saw them out of the corner of her eye, though. Four men with drawn guns, blocky black automatics. They were spread out across the street, peering at each face, ducking into doorways and hopping onto slow-moving jeepneys. “We can’t stay here,” Wren whispered. “They’ll find us. They’ll see us. They’re coming this way.” She hated the panic in her voice.
“Don’t move.” Stone’s lips moved against her skin, and even the imminent threat of discovery couldn’t stop her from shivering at the touch of his mouth. “Just kiss me.”
She turned her face to his, let her lips meet his. She wanted to get lost, wanted to get carried away, but she knew she couldn’t. She tried to keep the kiss light, but her body betrayed her. She felt her hands exploring him, her mouth devouring his eagerly, right there on the street with killers approaching.
Stone pulled his mouth from hers, but only enough to break the kiss and catch his breath. She breathed his breath and waited, holding on to his waist and wishing she could shrink away, wishing they were back in the hotel room, all danger forgotten.
The four men approached steadily, chattering to each other, shoving people out of their way, taking young Filipinas by the shoulders and spinning them around to examine their faces. Stone was completely still, his face against her cheek, one hand on the back of her neck, hips pressed against hers, but Wren felt the hard metal of his gun hidden behind her back in his other hand.
“Be ready,” he breathed.
Wren watched the men approach, counting her breaths, her heartbeats. Every muscle tense, she poised to move.
Three feet, now, and their voices were loud, raucous, slurring. Someone shouted in protest, then stuttered what sounded like an apology. Wren held on to Stone’s shoulders and trembled as their pursuers neared.
A dark hand clapped onto Stone’s shoulder and pulled him around. Wren didn’t have to fake the shriek of fear as she frantically buried her face against Stone’s chest.
“Hey, what the fuck is this?” Stone growled, grabbing the hand and shoving the man away. “Can’t you see I’m busy? Fuck off.” Wren clutched his neck and kept her face hidden, not daring to peek.
“I’m lookin’ for—”
“I don’t give a shit what you’re looking for,” Stone cut in, “you won’t find it here. Fuck off.”
“You betta talk nice more dan dat, American, or you find more trouble’an you can deal for.” This was punctuated by the distinctive sound of a pistol slide being racked.
Stone twisted in place, keeping Wren hidden behind him, a natural move to protect his frightened girlfriend. He let his own pistol show. “Maybe you should mind your own goddamn business. Don’t need trouble, but I’ll dish it out if you don’t go away.” There was a brief standoff, but then Stone’s rock-hard muscles relaxed ever so slightly under her hands, and he turned back around to hold Wren against his chest. “That was close,” he muttered. “Too fucking close.”
Wren only nodded. “Where are we going? Do we have a plan?” She risked a peek over Stone’s shoulder, watching the receding back of Cervantes’ goon.
“The US Embassy, I’m thinking.”
“Is that close by?”
Stone shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure where we even are, honestly. But assuming we’re in Quezon City, then no. It’s a long way away.” He glanced around, then back down to her. “It’s west and south of us, I’m pretty sure. We just have to get there without running into anymore of Cervantes’ guys.” He pulled her into a walk, heading south.
Wren twisted around once more, feeling unsettled, her spine prickling with the sensation of being watched. It was a mistake. She saw a vaguely familiar, dark-featured face contort with surprise and recognition.
“It her!” a voice shouted, pointing with the barrel of his pistol. “Go! Go after dem!”
Stone slewed around, saw approaching bodies, and spurred Wren into a run. “Shit! Move, Wren! Go!”
Wren ran, feeling her fingers slipping out of Stone’s grip. She panicked, grabbed at his shirt and tried to run faster, tried to keep up. He was pushing between people, weaving and shoving and stepping around bicycles and mopeds, and Wren tried desperately to keep up with his breakneck pace. Behind them, shouts announced the presence of their pursuers, the curses and angry grunts of bystanders being knocked down. The street was congested, packed even at midnight. Making progress through the crowd of pedestrians and buses and taxis and jeepneys was like trying to run full-speed through hip-deep water.
Wren’s lungs burned, her legs ached, and her vision blurred, but Stone kept running, seeming barely winded. A knot of people and cars clustered around a stalled truck spewing gray smoke forced Stone and Wren off of the red-and-yellow brick-paved sidewalk and out into the street, dodging the slow-moving traffic. Stone jerked Wren by the wrist, yanking her out of the way as a panel van roared past, narrowly missing her as she stumbled onto the thin strip of median. Angry voices echoed, tires squealed, horns blared. Wren twisted her upper torso as she ran, making out the forms of the four pursuers slipping through traffic, pistols held out in the open, eliciting screams. Sirens howled in the distance.
Thunder grumbled, and a warm rain settled in the air, misting and drifting in a slow wind, turning the ground underfoot slick. It wasn’t a heavy rain, but within minutes Wren was soaked to the skin, her feet squishing in her shoes, and her hair sticking to her neck and drifting into her mouth.
They crossed a bridge, and she caught a glimpse of the river, thick and green and speckled with rain. Onward they ran, slipping between shoppers with bag-laden arms and young men in tank-tops gathered in laughing groups. A truck loaded with crates of produce juddered and honked and squealed protesting brakes as Stone and Wren crossed the street once more, passing through the southbound traffic.
A jeepney trundled past them, yellow and red and orange and green, so crowded that passengers were hanging out of the windows and sitting on the roof. As it passed, Stone grabbed onto a railing bolted to the outside near the back left corner. Wrapping his arm around Wren’s waist, he hauled her against his side and clamped down, setting one foot on the rear bumper. They were airborne then, and the jeepney accelerated through another intersection. Stone’s arm formed an iron band around her middle, the only thing keeping her aloft. She felt around with her foot, seeking something to step on. She found a lip under her toe, grabbed on to the railing and lifted her weight away from Stone, who sighed in relief, peering through the curtain of warm rain.