I woke up naked in the same bed as Sloane Mercer—my oldest rival and the last woman I would ever choose to trust. The room had no exit, our phones had no signal, and the System offered only two choices: complete a series of increasingly intimate tasks, or suffer punishments designed to break us. Kissing. Straddling each other under a biometric lie detector. Synchronizing our heartbeats through a twelve-minute kiss. I only wanted to survive long enough to get out. Then Sloane put her hands on my waist, and I realized the most dangerous thing in that room might be how badly I wanted her not to stop.
