"Leo, you shifted. Your body —"
"I know what my body did." His voice is rough. Lower than usual. He swallows and I watch his throat work and I want to put my mouth there. The thought arrives fully formed and completely unhelpful.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to —"
"Stop." He steps closer. One step. The distance between us cuts in half and the air thickens. Something crosses his face. Recognition. Hunger.
"I can feel you," he says. Low. Almost a confession. "Since the yard. Since you — since all three of us —" He stops. Restarts. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't stay in my room. It's like there's a thread and it's pulling and it goes straight through my chest to yours."
I know. Because I feel it too. The flare at the fence didn't end when they pulled us apart. It just went underground. Running through the building like a current, connecting me to Leo and me to RJ.
"I feel it," I say.
His eyes come up to mine. Dilated. His breathing has changed — shorter, shallower. His hands are at his sides and his fingers are flexing and I can see the effort it's costing him not to reach for me.
"I came here to talk," he says.
"Okay."
"I came here to talk about what happened. About what it means."
"Okay."
"And now I'm here and you're looking at me and I can smell you and I can't —" He exhales. Hard. Presses his hand over his face. "Alex. I need you to tell me to leave."
I should. I should tell him to go back to his room.
"No," I say.
His hand drops from his face. His eyes find mine and what's in them isn't the calculated sharpness I'm used to. It's open. Stripped. Want with every defense peeled off it.
He moves.
Two steps. His hands come up and find my face — both hands, palms against my jaw, fingers sliding into my hair — and the contact lights up every nerve I have. His skin is hot. Rough. The calluses on his palms catch on my cheekbones and I lean into them because my body has been starving for touch in this place and didn't know it until right now. He holds me like he's afraid I'll disappear and pulls me into him and his mouth finds mine and I stop thinking.
The kiss isn't gentle. It's not tentative. It's desperate — his mouth opens against mine and the taste of him floods mysenses. Salt and heat and that wild undertone the shift put in his chemistry. I'm kissing him back hard enough that my teeth catch his lower lip and he makes a sound into my mouth that drops straight through me.
His hands slide from my face to my neck. Down my sides. His fingers find the hem of my shirt and push underneath and his palms are on my waist, on my ribs, and his thumbs trace the curve beneath my breasts — not grabbing, tracing, like he's memorizing the shape of me — and I arch into his hands because I need more contact than this or I'm going to lose my mind.
He pulls my shirt over my head. No bra underneath — the facility doesn't issue them, one more way this place was built for male bodies.
The way he looks at me.
I've been looked at before. Inventory. Assessment. This is nothing like that. His gaze drops and his jaw goes tight and his hands hover — actually hover, shaking, an inch from my skin — like he can't believe he's allowed to touch.
"Leo."
"Alex." His voice is wrecked. His hands cup my breasts and his thumbs drag across my nipples and the sound I make is loud and he presses his mouth to my throat to muffle his own groan against my skin.
"You have no idea," he says against my neck. His teeth graze my pulse point. His lips drag lower. "What you smell like. What you feel like. I've been going out of my mind."
His mouth moves down my throat. My collarbone. The slope of my breast. His lips close around my nipple and I dig my fingers into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks and my hips roll forward against him, seeking friction, finding it, grinding against the hard length of him through two layers of fabric that are suddenly the most offensive things I've ever worn.
I pull at his shirt. He strips it over his head and I get my hands on him — lean muscle, warm skin, a scar running along his left side that I trace with my fingers. He shivers under my touch. Fine tremors running through his whole body and I realize he's been holding himself together by a thread this entire time. The shift took something out of him and this — us — is putting something back.
"Bed," I say.
He walks me backward. The mattress hits the backs of my knees and I sit and he follows me down, kneeling between my legs, his hands running up my thighs. He hooks his fingers into my waistband and pulls. I lift my hips and the red fabric slides off and the air hits my skin and his hands tighten on my thighs and he just — stops. Looking at me. All of me. And the expression on his face breaks open like something in him just gave way.
