Leo.
Her dejection is as thick as the steamy vapor enclosing us, and I wish—of all the memories lost—that this was the one I could fucking banish from her mind. She took a life. And where I’ve taken many, she believes she took an innocent one. The torment claws at her, the guilt threatening to drag her under.
Yet it doesn’t matter if she took one life or a hundred. If she came to the misty ends of the world to take mine, I’d let her—if it could erase even an ounce of that pain from her eyes.
I will not let her drown in this.
The instant I saw Leo grab her arm, time folded, and suddenly it wasPrescott’s hand gripping her in the colonnade. And just as I witnessed her anger rise during that moment, I watched it swell into a tidal wave on the pier. I wasn’t supposed to observe, yet I couldn’t look away as I watched her fury brew, the umbrella clutched tight. Watched the reactive flame ignite—right before she swung it as a weapon.
Now, her heartache flares as bright as the gold threading her slate irises, and it god damn terrifies me—that this could be where I could lose her. Not to the ocean. Not to a lost heartbeat. But here, dragged under by her grief and guilt. A void that consumes everything.
These are the treacherous, dark waters where she could slip beyond my reach.
Tenderly, I claim her waist, tethering myself to her. I hold her tight, refusing to let her drift away. If she needs someone to take her wrath, someone to punish to keep her fighting, breathing?—
I decide I can give her this.
I can take it. All of it. The pain, the fury. The fear crashing through her like the cold, dark tide.
I can be what she needs.
“It does matter,” I tell her, impatience bleeding into my tone. “You should’ve told me.” I catch the hem of her shirt, prying the material open once more and possessively splaying my hand over the length of her scar. “You should’ve made me aware before you asked that of me in the observatory, knowing what could happen.” The memory is a visceral assault of her body collapsing against mine, breath and heartbeat faltering. “How could you tempt me to strangle you, knowing?—”
“You wouldn’t even touch me,” she interrupts, chest rising against my palm. “You wanted to. Yet you couldn’t, wouldn’t.Shouldn’t.” Her tone turns mocking. “This entire time, you’ve been suffering these violent thoughts of me, and if you’d known aboutthis—” She breaks off, lips trembling. “Would you have ever allowed yourself to even look at me?”
At my intense silence, she nods knowingly. Then she tentatively lifts her hand to my chest, fingertips tracing the ink scored across my skin, the lines of the constellation—her constellation. Her eyes spear mine in haunting revelation. “Your mind must’ve truly been a tortured place.”
“And what if I had hurt you…or worse?” A fierce ache scalds my throat, and I swallow painfully as the warmth of her skin seeps into my palm. “How tortured do you think my fucked-up brain would be then?”
“God, Orion. If you think I’m so broken, why even bring me back?” Her accusation slices through me, deep and anguished. “Why drag me back to this? The constant pain, the relentless struggle, and the—” She draws a shuddering breath, eyes blazing. “Do you even understand how fucking exhausting it is? Why not just let me go?”
The raw misery behind her demand levels me. As the fire fades behind her eyes, fury coils beneath my ribs—at her scars, at the answers they hold, at the terror of what they mean. And I’m viscerally enraged that, right this moment, I have no one to kill.
We stand beneath the fall of water, each drop a catalyst. Her hand braced on my chest, mine fused to hers, the silence between heartbeats stretching. Waiting for the next note, the next shattering revelation.
This space between us spans as eternal and infinite as the darkest void of space, terrifying in its utter silence.
And yet, even in the deepest reaches of these cold, dark places there is friction, vibration, heat—collision that births stars.
Her pulse, my breath. The shared current of touch. What’s needed to eliminate the distance and fear across this chasm of silence.
Her eyes burn with those heated bands of gold, bright enough to ignite my blood. A storm of desperation and desire churns within her eyes of dust and starlight. They beg something of me.
And god-damn, it reduces me to a wretched, base creature. I grasp the waistband of her skirt with my right hand, pulling her flush against me. “Fuck,” I hiss, immediately relinquishing my grip. With a harsh exhale, I slap my hand against the tile and lean over her, letting the broken cadence of her heartbeat against my palm ground me.
“You can’t look at me like that,” I say near her ear, voice roughened by need. My thumb brushes a tender sweep across her skin. “You have no idea what you’re asking of me. I can’t deny you anything—so please…fuck, angel. Don’t ask this of me.”
Her head tips back, throat bared defiantly as her shimmering gaze meets mine, fierce and unyielding. “I know exactly what I’m asking,” she insists, though this time, her lips quiver with the challenge. A contradiction that rends my composure. “And I’m not that breakable.”
Her beautiful breasts rise with her quick breath as her hand slips down the wet plane of my chest, across my tense abdomen, slender fingers hooking beneath my waistband.
“Jesus—fuck, Collins. Don’t make me fuck you up against this shower wall.” Tendons corded in fire, I brace my hands on either side of her, caging her in and holding myself back in the same desperate move. “Don’t make me risk hurting you.”
I close my eyes against the intoxicating vision of her beneath me as her fingertips find the leather belt, making every muscle in my abdomen tighten. She needs proof—proof that I can see past the scars, beyond the broken places. To prove her accusation false.
With one word from her, I’ll surrender to this insatiable hunger. Becoming something more vile and depraved, even as I’ve just stolen her from the brink of death. Only there’s a crushing vise locking my ribs, the fear that this is where she exists, perpetually balancing on this hazardous edge.
She works the buckle loose, and I capture her arm, driving it above her head. Anchoring her to the tile, I press my fingers to the pulse point of her wrist, synching my internal count to each racing beat.
