I need something to help me sleep, Max thought as she stared into the great gray-beyond of her bedroom ceiling, awash in its bland vastness. She was struck by the parallelism of the night sky's way of reminding her of her insignificance and the ceiling's way of saying the exact same thing.
Max rolled onto her side and kicked the blankets off her feet. She stared out the window, across the sleepy Seattle, and wondered what he was doing.
The past few weeks had been surprising. She'd gone on so many runs with him, taking turns staring at one another's backsides as they hauled these tiny, meaningless packages across the city. The bantering had been fun, the conversations, hell, all of it was.
And the fact that he embraced who she was and didn't see her as a monster – and didn't see her as a soldier above all else – that was freeing.
Just earlier that day in the torrential rain, each caught sight of a brand new, shiny SUV belonging to a local henchman. They decided to relieve him of his flashy ride and make some money on the side.
But one of them triggered the alarm, and it was drawing lots of unwanted attention, and they were getting soaked, and things seemed to be going sideways.
"Run!" he had suggested, a huge grin replacing his 'serious work' face.
And they had.
They had to control their speed, otherwise a parking lot full of regular people would start to wonder how they blurred, except they wouldn't know what to call it and would eventually come up with some dumbass name like 'super speed running'.
They ran through the alleyways as if they were obstacle courses: under the overhang, over the fruit stand, past the dealers, lunge to the side to avoid running into a couple holding hands, dodge the fire escape ladder and sneak into another alleyway.
And when they ducked into the back entrance of one of the local vendors and came face-to-face with one another, blood pumping, breathless, full of adrenaline, Max backed up against a wall with his body touching hers, and that sexy as hell look in his eyes, he went for it.
The kiss.
And it was exciting, kissing him. The combination of being drenched from the rain, soft lips on oh-so-soft lips, his thoroughly soaked body heating hers up with every millisecond of this newfound lust, it had all made the whole thing so unbearably, impossibly sexy.
And now Max was waiting for darkness to wash over her, to have one more second in the rain, to hear her heart in her chest like the rain tapping at her window.
Not rain, Max realized, smiling.
Alec.