Between Shadows by Chanel Cleeton Read Free Book Online Page A

careful to keep our hands from touching, ignoring the smug expression on his face. This is an assignment, nothing more. I can’t repeat past mistakes.
    It was one night. One night that meant more to me than it should have and less to him than I wanted. One night I now wish I could forget. Maybe it would be easier to forget him if he hadn’t been my first or if I hadn’t spent most of my life—the life I remember, at least—following him around, doing everything I could to impress him.
    Luke pulls his helmet over his dark brown hair. He climbs onto the Ducati, swinging his leg over the machine with fluid grace. For a moment he sits there, staring at me. Waiting for me to join him. Daring me to.
    Hell.
    I climb on, my body behind his, relishing the feel of the powerful metal beneath me. I ignore the knot in my stomach as I wrap my arms around Luke’s waist, my breasts pressed against his back. 
    “How do you afford a bike like this?” I shout over the sound of the engine roaring to life.
    “Life’s different outside the Academy.”
    It must be. We each receive a stipend for our assignments. In the beginning it’s not much, but it’s something. Most of us save it in offshore accounts the Academy taught us to open. It seems like the wisest thing to do given the nature of our lives. The Academy sees to our basic needs—food, clothes, shelter. There’s nothing I’ve ever really wanted.
    Until now. 
    First thing I’m buying when I get out on my own and start making real money as an asset? A bike just like this one. No—better than this one.
    The bike peels onto the street and I lean forward, adjusting to the motion, wrapping my arms tighter around Luke’s waist. He’s solid beneath my arms, his muscles hard. The asset in me admires what he’s become, the power that fills his body now. The woman in me admires his body for entirely different reasons.
    I don’t know when I began thinking of Luke as different from everyone else, when I started seeing him as a person rather than just an asset. When I began wanting him. It was gradual, I think. Or at least it felt that way to me. We were always together, always training, always fighting. We were always together, and then one day I looked at him and I couldn’t look away anymore.
    Being this close to Luke sends a familiar urge running through me, one I haven’t felt in two years. It’s too easy to remember what he looks like under the clothes between us, to imagine the changes and wonder. Too easy to remember kissing down the hard planes of his stomach, my tongue gliding over his flesh…
    I focus on the target instead, slipping into the skin I’m most comfortable in.
    The Academy is located in a quiet part of Bloomsbury, several miles away from the posh Kensington neighborhood where Arnoff goes to school. It’s still early and the city is full of evening traffic, making the trip longer than it should be. The night is crisp, the city lights a mosaic of colors brightening the sky. For a moment if I pretend I’m somewhere else, doing something else, I feel free.
    We stop at a traffic light.
    Luke turns around, focusing on a point over my shoulder. “We have company.” 
    I can barely hear his voice over the loud roar of the bike’s engine, but his words send a chill through my body. “Where?”
    “Sedan. Black. Five cars behind us. It pulled out from the street in front of the Academy right after we did. It’s been there ever since.”
    I turn. He’s right; the sedan sits a few cars back from us. Maybe it’s a coincidence, a product of London’s heavy congestion. The tone of Luke’s voice tells me otherwise. He’s too good of an asset to make that mistake. A thin thread of panic settles inside me, slithering through the ice filling my veins. I’ve never been in this situation before. None of my missions have ever involved someone chasing me. 
    “What are you going to do?” I ask.
    “Lose them.”
    The light changes and we race through the