“But you did.”
I hate how breathless I sound. I hate that my knees soften anyway.
His jaw tightens.
“You called to me.”
“I did no such thing,” I lie, and the mark at my collarbone burns like laughter.
“Then why can I barely breathe?” he asks, as if he doesn’t already know.
Because we’re burning.
Even from an arm’s length the heat of him brushes my skin—metal and smoke and the wild, relentless thing that lives under his control. His gaze drops to my collarbone. The mark glowssoft and stubborn. It pulses once. The answering throb under his ribs pulls at me like tide.
He steps closer.
“You hate me,” he says, voice low enough to trip over.
“Yes,” I whisper, and the truth tastes like blood and honesty. “Every part of me hates you.”
“Then why are you shaking?”
Because the other truth is bigger, and grief has taught me how to hold two things that don’t agree.
“Because I also…” My mouth trembles. My pride does, too. “I also want you.”
The air between us snaps, a bowstring singing before it breaks. He moves—one step, two—and I could stop him. I should. I don’t. His hand comes up, rough and careful, and cups my cheek like a man touching a miracle with burned fingers. His thumb brushes the damp just under my eye as if he needs proof I am not something the bond invented to punish him.
“Say it again,” he growls, wrecked.
“I want you,” I breathe, and the want leaps to him like fire finds oil.
He kisses me.
Hard. Desperate. Like drowning breaking into breath. My gasp is swallowed by his mouth; my fingers fit to his shoulders like they learned the shape once and never forgot. He drags me closer—hips, ribs, chest—no daylight, no defense. The world tilts and chooses us and I am too tired to argue.
“You drive me mad,” he mutters against my lips, against my jaw; his mouth finds the place where my pulse lives andbites, then soothes, then bites again until my knees threaten to give. “You haunt me.”
“You left me,” I say, and it isn’t an accusation so much as a bleeding. I tilt my head and offer my throat and hate myself for the offering. “You left me to burn.”
“I’ve been burning without you.” His hands take my hips, thumbs pressing into the place that makes my breath break. The mark sears between us; light spills under my skin and answers the flare in his. Magic prickles, frantic and hungry, and the garden leans in to listen.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he says into my mouth. “I should walk away.”
“Then go,” I choke, even as my fingers knot at his nape and pull, even as my body arches like I was made for this angle, this ache. “Walk away.”
He doesn’t. He can’t. Fate is a net and we have been fighting it long enough to wear ourselves down to the nakedness under the fight.
He groans—sound torn from a place his pride can’t reach—and threads his hands into my hair. This time when he kisses me it’s slower, deeper. Not a taking. A learning. Tongue to tongue, breath shared until my lungs forget their job and only remember him. The tenderness hurts worse than the hunger. I want to sob and I want to climb him and I want to tell him to never touch me again and I want to live right here, mouth to mouth, forever.
He breaks away first. Breath ragged. Eyes wild. Every wall I ever hated in him gone. He looks… young. He looks like a man trying. He looks ruined and holy and mine.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispers.
“You never did,” I whisper back, and the words split me open because they are true and because I have wanted him anyway.
We don’t move. The garden is aflame—lilies brightening, moon roses throwing a soft halo, fire blossoms licking light up their torn stems as if our want is sunlight made molten. The bond is a drum and we are the skin stretched across it, thrumming.
