I'm not deciding this. That's the terrifying part. My body has an opinion about where it wants to go and that opinion is toward him, and my brain is watching from about three steps behind, shouting objections my legs aren't listening to.
The chain-link divider is now ten feet away.
RJ turns.
Not at the end of his circuit. In the middle. That snap — like something yanked his attention — and he finds me immediately. No scanning. His eyes go straight to where I am.
The chain link is between us. One fence. Razor wire on top. Maybe ten feet between us if I close the distance and he does the same.
He walks toward me.
He crosses the space in long steps and stops at the fence. Right there. Right on the other side.
Close enough that I can see the scars on his forearms — thin, silver, layered over each other like a map of every bad night he's had in this place. Close enough to see the way his chest moves when he breathes, slow and deliberate, like he's controlling it by force. Close enough to see the dark hair falling across his face, and the sharp line of his jaw underneath, and the mouth — God, the mouth. Full. Soft-looking. The one part of him that isn't angles and control, and my brain shorts out a little looking at it because all I can think is what that mouth would feel like against my skin.
His eyes are pale. Gray or blue or something between. Through the mess of hair they burn into mine and my whole body tightens — not fear, just want. Plain, physical, devastating want. The kind that starts low in my stomach and spreads until my skin feels too thin for what's underneath it.
He's close enough to touch. The thought makes my breath go shallow and my thighs press together and I hate that I'm having this reaction to a man in a cage, but my body doesn't care about context. My body cares about the way his shoulders fill that shirt and the strip of stomach visible above his waistband and the way he's looking at me like I'm the only real thing in his entire world.
He doesn't speak.
My left wrist is on fire.
The heat isn't pulsing anymore. It's pulling. Toward him.
I reach the chain link. My fingers close around it.
The metal is cold. My skin is hot. And the second his fingers touch mine —
The heat detonates.
Not gradually. An explosion — white-hot, electric, racing from my wrist up my arm into my chest. I can't breathe. My vision goes bright at the edges. My fingers lock on the chain link and I can't let go because the metal is the circuit and my body is the current. And underneath the supernatural noise, the raw physical truth of him — his hand against mine through the metal, the rough heat of his skin, the size of his fingers dwarfing mine. I want to climb this fence. I want to press my body against his and find out if the rest of him is as warm as his hands. The want is so sharp it's almost pain.
My knees buckle. I'm gripping the fence to stay upright. The heat is everywhere and my left wrist is incandescent. I look down.
Under my skin.
A mark under my skin.
I stare at it. Heart hammering. Body shaking.
"Alex!"
Hands on me. Someone grabbing my other wrist — hard, pulling, trying to break my grip.
Leo.
Something opens – in me. A door inside my chest blows open and what's behind it is a roar — a flood of warmth and pressure and connection that runs from Leo's hand on my right wrist through my body and out through my left hand on RJ's and back again. The three of us. A circuit. Leo. Me. RJ.
Leo makes a sound.
I've heard it before. Torres. The common room. The whimper before the breaking.
"Leo —"
His grip tightens. Spasms. His fingers are wrong — thicker, knuckles swelling, nails darkening and curving. He was tryingto pull me off the fence. He was trying to help. And his body is doing something he can't control, and his face when I turn —
Terror. Pure. His eyes huge, mouth open, the smirk gone. Just an eighteen-year-old kid whose body is betraying him.
