The gravity of her gaze condenses the atmosphere between us, the echo of her words crashing against my chest more powerfully than the waves trying to shatter this rock.
“What do you need?” I dare to ask.
Her arm curls tighter around her middle as she stares up at me. “A distraction.”
An ache lodges at the base of my throat, and I decide I can give her this. “What would you tell a patient caught in a similar situation?”
She releases another light laugh. “Clever. But I think I’d warn them not to get marooned on rocks with devastatingly attractive astrophysicists to begin with.”
She pulls a smile from me too easily. “Is there a better way to get you alone, then?”
Something flashes in her eyes, but before I’m able to analyze it, a wave breaks over us with a harsh spray, and Collins buries herself into my side.
The feel of her hair grazing my cheek stokes the fiery itch beneath my skin, and a hit of alarm spikes my adrenals. In an effort to distract myself as much as her, I cast a glance at the starry canvas above. “If the moon were full, we could see it reach its zenith, giving us a better calculation for the outgoing tide.”
“All this from studying rocks in space,” she says absently, but not at all incredulous.
“Admittedly, I have the advantage of watching the ocean for years.”
“For some reason, I doubt you need the advantage.” She peeks up at me, her smile sweet but knowing. “Don’t try to be humble, Dr. Night. It doesn’t suit you.”
There’s a flutter in my chest. “Noted, Dr. Holbrook.”
“You can use my name.”
“You caved on that stipulation.” The corner of my mouth kicks up.
“Life in peril has a way of doing that,” she says, her starry eyes hung on mine.
As the ocean rises around us, I keep her locked in my gaze, feeling unmoored by the rhythmic crash of waves and the sharp, howling wind. The thundering drum of my pulse. The spray misting the atmosphere, ethereal and hazy. Beneath it all, I can sense the violent, uneven thump of her heart, a rising chorus of chords and beats that twine around me, through me, rushing the deeply pronounced crags of my soul more furiously than the ocean between the hollow veins of the rocks.
At the atomic level, chemical attraction is an absolute, a rule. The process to form bonds is a law woven through the very fabric of the universe. The fusion which fuels the stars.
There is no refuting the science. Instant chemical attraction not only exists, on a nuclear scale, it’s strong enough to power a hypernova.
I just never believed I’d experience it outside the lens of my telescope.
An ache sears my throat as I realize, here beside her, falling into the captivating depth of her eyes, I’m utterly susceptible.
This attraction burns.
Breaking the charged connection, I swallow, returning my gaze to the dark expanse. There is one advantage I can take—one I should be shamefully opposed to.
But the dark tide rising within me makes its own demands.
As my eyes track back to her, maddeningly beautiful in her disheveled, vulnerable state, obsession licks through me, coiling around me like the dark tendrils that twist tighter and tighter every day.
“Why are you here, Collins?”
Her body tenses next to mine. “I told you, I went for a walk?—”
“At Stonehurst.”
It’s unfair on my part, cornering her like this on a rock in the middle of thrashing waves where she can’t escape, where she’s too fearful to raise a defensive wall.
But fear has a way of stripping our defenses. Making us honest.
She pushes upright and tucks her arms close to her chest, shielding herself against the next hostile spray off a breaker. “I was brought in to help mediate,” she explains simply. “Dr. Banner wants to assure you’re being given the attention you need?—”
