For a moment, we simply look at one another, and I realize how easily we fell into rhythm tonight. Despite the passage of time and never having served on a mission together, we still understand each other. And that should comfort me. It should feel natural.
Instead, it terrifies me.
I make for my room, almost colliding with the door in an effort to escape the looming presence at my back. But as I step through, hands clasp my waist, freezing me in place. Raven leans his forehead against the top of my head, and we both stand still, our breathing ragged.
“El,” Raven says, and the simple utterance of my name has so much meaning hidden beneath the surface. A simple invitation, or a siren’s call to a more perilous path.
One woven with mutual destruction.
It’s like we’re standing on a precipice. One move could push us off the ledge, and the other could as easily drag us back to safer ground. Despite myself, I hover on the knife’s edge of indecision, wondering which way I fall will cut the least.
But I don’t think I want safety.
I don’t want to be pushed either.
I want tojump.
I twist in his hold, my eyes locking with his, and I pause, struck by the raw desperation etched across his face. It’s as if, for the first time, he’s allowing me to glimpse something genuine. Something raw and real.
“Did I tell you how breathtaking you look tonight?” he rasps.
“I can’t recall. Maybe tell me again.”
“You look—”
He doesn’t get to finish the words before our lips collide.
He tastes like honey, and cinnamon, and all the things I’m not supposed to have. His hands cup the back of my neck, tangling in my hair, and I slide mine up his chest, the texture like silk and stone beneath my palms. A moan slips from my lips, dragging a responding growl from his. I can’t count the number of times I have relived the memory of his lips on mine.
But no memory compares to this.
Hands slip down the arch of my back and over the curve of my ass, gripping the backs of my thighs as he drags me up his body. I part my legs and wrap them around his waist as my back hits a wall, and he grinds his hips against mine.
I gasp as pleasure thrums through me, and he swallows the sound, devouring it like a dying man desperate for air. My hands roam every inch of his body they can find. Mapping the sharp angles of his face, running through his hair, tracing down the curve of his back.
It isn’t enough.
I want more.Needmore.
Steps sound in the hall—a low scuff of boots against polished marble, dashing out the smoldering flames with the cold, harsh waters of reality.
“Put me down.” My words are a whisper, but the command in them is clear.
Raven stiffens, but he does as I ask, lowering me down the length of his body until I’m standing on my own two feet.
“Star—”
“No,” I cut him off, combing my fingers through my hair as I battle my own desires for some semblance of self-control. I watch as he pulls away—not only stepping back physically but also retreating into himself, shutting down mentally and emotionally. I breathe in a deep, trembling breath, and my next words taste bitter as I force them past my lips. “We need to leave the past where it belongs, Raven. This will be easier on us both if we do.”
He straightens his tunic, and those honeyed eyes meet mine, their heat finally tempered. “If that’s what you want.”
As the door clicks shut behind Raven, the warmth of his touch still lingers on my skin, like an ember refusing to die out. My back stays pressed against the wall, as if its cool surface can still the rapid beat of my heart. Every part of me wants to chase after him, call him back, but I force myself to stay rooted in place. Weakness has no place here—not when everything depends on clear eyes and a sharper mind.
I inhale a tenuous breath, willing the knot in my chest to loosen. The kiss was everything I had remembered…and worse. It reminds me of what we almost had, of the fractures in my life that I’ve papered over with reluctant duty. Being with Raven feels too much like standing on the edge of a promise, a perfect world I can’t step into.
That’s why I said it—to protect myself.
To protect him.
