The Bleeding Crowd by Jessica Dall Page A

“Duly noted.”
    “Get that smirk off your face before I change
my mind.” She glared at him.
    He ran his good hand along her jaw line. “You
might be smart enough to avoid any misguided affection, but you
forget I’m at a lower evolutionary level than you.”
    “Stop it,” she insisted.
    “Just, let me, all right?” He stepped a
little closer, letting his injured arm drop to his side.
    “Stop it before I call up the guards and have
them drag you away.”
    He watched her chest rise and fall with rapid
breaths and felt her pulse speed up under his hand. He bent,
brushing his lips against her collarbone. When she didn’t pull
away, he kissed it again, moving to the hollow of her neck.
    “Ben, stop it,” she said in a quiet
voice.
    “I don’t want to,” he mumbled against her
skin.
    “Seriously.” She pushed against his chest.
“Stop it.”
    All at once, he jerked, stiffened and
stumbled backwards.
    “Are you all right?” Her eyes widened and her
hands went to his waist, making sure he didn’t hit his hurt arm
against anything.
    “Yeah,” he croaked. “My...”
    “Your...?”
    He steadied himself and then touched his
collarbone.
    “Oh.” She looked at the scar there. “Did I
hit...? I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to. I didn’t push that
hard...”
    “Yeah.” He gave a short laugh. “If you had, I
would be on the ground right now.”
    “I’m really, really sorry.” She helped him
sit on the chair near her desk. “I really didn’t mean to... shock
you or whatever that chip does.”
    “Well, it took my mind off my arm.” He
offered a tense smile.
    She laughed nervously. “Not your week is
it?”
    “Seems to be shaping up that way.”
    “I can get you some more acetaminophen,” she
said. “You aren’t close to overdosing.”
    “That those red and white pills?”
    Dahlia nodded.
    “I’ll really be okay. I’ve lived with that
chip as far back as I can remember.”
    She frowned at that. “You don’t know how big
it is?”
    He shook his head. “All I know is they put it
in there when I was two. Only reason I can figure that out is I
have a memory someone doing something to my shoulder that hurt like
a bitch when I was that young.”
    “If it’s right under the skin like that and
not too big, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to remove.”
    “Are you offering to take it out?” He looked
at her.
    She froze as the implication hit her,
shrugged off the question. “Just hypothesizing.”
    “Well, it makes no difference I suppose,” Ben
said. “They’d notice if it were missing. It has all our information
on it. They’d be a little suspicious if they scanned me on the way
home and couldn’t find anything.”
    “Information chips.” She shook her head.
    “What about them?”
    “They sound uncomfortably close to how we
track the animals we have on farms.”
    “Well, no offense, but you don’t seem to
consider us much better than anything you might raise on a
farm.”
    “I might take offence if it weren’t true,
but...”
    He nodded in understanding
    She moved over to her closet, pulling the
shirt she had been wearing from the day before off and pulling a
new one on. “I’m going to get us a big breakfast. You need to keep
your strength up. You lost a lot of blood yesterday.”
    “Okay, Doc.”
    She pulled on a pair of pants. “Ben, don’t
call me Doc.”
    “Sure thing, Doc.”
    She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.
Grabbing her key card, she slipped it into her back pocket before
heading outside.
    Summer was finally abating, leaving the air
moist but crisp, almost as if a fog were going to move in. Soon it
would be time to break out her winter clothes.
    “Top o’ the morning.” Cassandra popped up in
her usual bright fashion. She studied Dahlia for a long moment.
“You look awful.”
    Dahlia snorted. “Thanks.”
    “You know, that’s not what I meant.” Her
friend waved that away. “Did you sleep okay?”
    “Not especially.” Dahlia shook her head.