With just the use of my name, she pulls me out of my conflicted thoughts. A flash of something hot and aroused courses through her, and I’m drawn to that blazing current of my fire sign, even more curious why she’s so desperate to convince me that she’s not frightened when I can sense her fear. Beneath those buttons that fasten all the way to the top of her collar. Beneath the brave, fearless mask she wears is something so intoxicating it threatens to strip me of all reason.
Her fear is tangible.
Delectable.
Collins is quivering with it, the same way she was in her office. Even if the violent and deviant facets of my nature intrigue her, they very much terrify her.
With a quick move to conceal her nerves, she swipes the rest of her hair off her shoulder. “I heard a piano earlier, from down the hallway. Was that you?”
A knowing smirk twists my lips at her obvious tactic. Her question is tentative yet devious, prodding me. My sexy archer just doesn’t miss.
“Tell me how you got the bruises,” I counter with my own demand as I eye her neck. We share a similar hunger, and I want to hear her say it.
She wets her lips, rolls them. Each action slow, her avoidance deliberate, bringing my undivided attention to her mouth. Whatever unknown force she commands, it affects my matter, it affects me, charging the space between us with our own dark electromagnetism.
A hint of a smile touches her lips as she holds her ground. “Some answers are best discovered through arduous research. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Night? That is, if you’re up for the challenge.”
Once again, she’s tempting the demons to come out and play. And fuck, I’m weary of holding them back.
My muscles corded tight, I’m barely restrained as I say, “And if I do hurt you.”
A defiant spark ignites her eyes. “I’ll stop you.”
Fuck.
The illicit image of Collins fighting me torches whatever shred of restraint I held fast to. I see the fire come to life in her, that fury—and I’m ravenous to taste it.
All this time, I had no idea how frozen I’d become. Empty, desolate. Suspended in a void of darkness. Until the heat of her fiery, consuming nature cracked the confining layer of ice.
I need the danger, the rush.
Now I need her.
Nothing has ever felt more dangerous.
To my own fucking detriment, I take a step forward, then another, gradually lessening the distance to her. The sliver of air separating our bodies animates, molecules begging to be brought together.
I hold her gaze, and something heady passes between us as her seductive melody stirs my atoms into a frenzy, the moment between us magnetic.
The willpower to fight this force goes up in flames.
It’s fucking written in the stars. From the moment Collins entered my orbit, there was one thing I understood unequivocally:
She was mine.
She belonged to me.
I take her hand in mine and lead her into the depths of my observatory.
Spacetime is a maddening idea. Imagine the entirety of your life, every moment, event, experience—from your past and the future ahead of you—all composed on the stage of the universe. These are your memories. From your first kiss to your final goodbye, every single memory lost like sand to the tide. Now imagine all of these moments are still out there, the grains waiting, never lost, somewhere in the ocean of spacetime.
—DR. ORION NIGHT, SYMPOSIUM SPEECH NOV. 30TH
12
Event Horizon
And like a comet burn’d That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th’ arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.
