He stops walking for one second. One beat of complete stillness.
RJ's hand tightens on mine. He doesn't look up.
Jake starts walking again. Different angle — not toward us, not aggressively away. He passes maybe thirty feet off and disappears to the other side of the yard.
RJ's hand loosens. He lets go.
"Go," he says.
I go.
***
Leo is in the common room being extremely visible when I pass — mid-story, gesturing, Reyes watching him from the doorway with the expression of someone who has given up trying to understand what's happening. Leo clocks me without breaking stride and says something that makes Reyes laugh.
I keep walking.
Back in my room I sit on the bed and think about RJ's thumb moving over the three arcs through chain link. The weight of his forehead almost against the fence. His hand tightening when Jake crossed the yard.
I'm about to lie down when someone knocks.
I open the door.
Gray is in the corridor. Not pacing. Just there — arms crossed, eyes coming up from the floor when the door opens. Four days of the bond pulled taut between us and he's been waiting long enough that the waiting has settled into something patient.
He doesn't explain what he's doing there.
He doesn't have to.
I step back from the door.
He comes in.
Chapter six
He comes in and the door closes and then his hands are on my face and I don't have time to say anything before his mouth finds mine.
Not gentle. Not careful. Days of the bond pulled taut and the walls down and Gray kissing me like he's been thinking about nothing else since he left my room before dawn and maybe he hasn't. His hands cup my jaw and tilt my head back and I grab the front of his shirt because I need something to hold onto and kiss him back just as hard.
He makes a sound against my mouth. Low. Satisfied and hungry at the same time.
"I've been—" he starts.
"Me too," I say.
He pulls back enough to look at me. His eyes are dark blue and the control he spent months building is nowhere visible. Thisis just Gray. The man underneath the discipline. The one who walked across a frozen compound and knelt on my floor and said things that cost him everything.
"I need—" he tries again.
"Gray." I pull him back down by the shirt. "I know."
He groans into the kiss and walks me backward until my knees hit the bed, he's lifting me — hands at my waist, easy, like I weigh nothing — and dropping me onto the mattress and coming down over me in the same motion. His weight settles over mine and I exhale and he goes still for a second, just breathing, forehead against my temple.
"Alex," he says. Low. Against my skin.
His mouth drags down my jaw to my throat and I tip my head back and let him. He bites softly at my pulse point and I feel it in my stomach, warm and immediate, the bond flaring between us at the contact. His hands are at my hips, fingers digging in slightly, holding me in place — not restraint, possession — and I arch into it because yes, that, exactly that.
"You're mine," he says against my throat. Not asking.
