by Meli Raine
I squeeze. “You mean this?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“Touch all you want, Kina.”
I squeeze again.
His palm starts at my knee, traverses my inner thigh, rolls across my hipbone and up my ribs, fingers curling around my breast. “I'll touch all I want, too.”
“As you wish.”
We grin at each other, loopy and stupid.
“This is us,” he whispers, blowing on my nipple, enjoying my reaction.
“Yes, it is.”
“We did it, Kina. We passed the ultimate test.”
“Did we?”
“Yes. We survived.”
“What do we do now?”
“We find a way to thrive.”
Chapter 27
Callum
“I cannot tolerate this mass society news show style,” Kina repeats, the same complaint coming my way three or four times a day, whenever we watch the news together. I'm on the couch in our private quarters, remote in hand, flipping between two news channels to decide on the best one.
There is no best one.
“I know.”
“It's so–childlike! As if we're too stupid to understand information and need flashing colors and clips of no more than twelve seconds each.”
“I don't make the news show standards, Kina. Let's watch to see how they're spinning our story.”
“Which one? The children being discovered, or the president's death?”
“Both. All. There are still plenty of Stateless operatives in mass society. Ludame may have won this battle–and it's a big one–but she hasn't defeated everyone who disagrees with her. Stateless has plenty of different factions within it.”
“And we're still not sure who, exactly, she's allied with.”
“We know Hokes helps her. And she helped us.”
“For now.”
“This just in from Mechlanburg County, Pennsylvania: An unidentified man has died in a single-car accident that leaves authorities puzzled. His vehicle was found upside down in a creek bed. An infant was in the back seat, alive in its car seat, and first responders fought a strong current to save the child. The baby appears to be only a few weeks old. Authorities are...”
“That's close to one of the Stateless compounds,” I tell Kina, who lets out a long, aggrieved sigh.
“Thank goodness that poor baby survived. But the mother... oh, how horrible to get that phone call from the police.”
“Hmmm.”
She eyes me warily. “How many news stories are tied to us in one way or another?”
“Too many,” I say, kissing her temple, settling in to watch the rest.
Too many.
:)
Thank you for reading Fateless, the final book in USA Today bestselling author Meli Raine’s Stateless trilogy.
If you haven’t read earlier trilogies by Meli Raine, you can start with Finding Allie, the first of her books, in the Breaking Away series. Chase, Allie, Mark and Galt are all introduced as Chase and Allie meet in a brawl in her stepfather’s bar in small-town southern California. The son and daughter of warring drug dealers, they find love, safety, and redemption in each other’s arms — but not before brutal murders and kidnappings change the course of their life together.
Get Finding Allie wherever you find books, and join Meli Raine’s newsletter at http://www.meliraine.com to find out about future books.
Also by Meli Raine
Suggested Reading Order
The Breaking Away Series (Chase and Allie)
Finding Allie
Chasing Allie
Keeping Allie
The Coming Home Series (Mark and Carrie)
Return
Revenge
Reunion
The Harmless Series (Drew and Lindsay)
A Harmless Little Game
A Harmless Little Ruse
A Harmless Little Plan
The Shameless Series (Silas and Jane)
A Shameless Little Con
A Shameless Little Lie
A Shameless Little Bet
The False Series (Duff and Lily)
False Memory
False Hope
False Start
The Stateless Series (Callum and Kina)
Stateless
Traceless
Fateless
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Meli Raine writes romantic suspense with hot bikers, intense undercover DEA agents, bad boys turned good, and Special Ops heroes -- and the women who love them.
Meli rode her first motorcycle when she was five years old, but she played in the ocean long before that. She lives in New England with her family.
Visit her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/meliraine
Join her New Releases and Sales newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/beV0gf
www.meliraine.com
