Nothing comes.
My marks are glowing with the effort ofnotdoing something. Of feeling everything she's throwing at me and not reaching back. Not smoothing her out. Not making this simpler than it is.
"I could make this easier," I say. My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "I won't."
"Why?" The word breaks in the middle.
"Because you'd never forgive me if I did." I meet her eyes. Let her see what's in mine. "And because I need you to hate me honestly. If you're ever going to stop."
Her breathing changes. Shallower. Faster. The rage isstill there, but something else is surfacing underneath. Something that tastes like want.
She hates that I can feel it.
She should throw me out.
I can feel her thinking it. The calculation running: order him to leave, seal the door, rebuild the walls. The sensible response. The safe one.
"The night before Sigma-9."
I go very still.
"You came to my quarters. You started to say something." Her voice is steady again. Controlled. The rage locked back down behind discipline. "Then the mission alert sounded."
I remember. The words I'd prepared. The confession I'd been building toward for three months. The moment stolen by tactical necessity.
"What were you going to say, Dexter?"
The answer is in my eyes before I can control it. In the flare of bioluminescence that lights the space between us, painting her face in shades of blue. My marks always betray me first.
"I was going to tell you I loved you." The words come out quiet. Final. "That I'd never loved anyone the way I loved you. That when the mission was over, I wanted?—"
She kisses me.
Her mouth on mine, cutting off the words, silencing them both. Her hands fist in my jacket, yanking me down to her level. The kiss tastes like violence and desperation and six years of grief.
I shouldn't. She knows I shouldn't.
Neither of us cares.
My hands find her waist. Her body is exactly as I remember—smaller than mine, perfectly fitted to the spaces between my arms. She makes a sound against my mouth. Half-sob, half-something else. My marks blaze bright enough to light the room.
This is a wound reopening.
This is a cauterization.
This is the thing we've been moving toward since I saw her in that docking bay with my blood on her hands.
She breaks the kiss. Steps back. Breathing hard. Her green eyes are wet but nothing falls.
"Get out." Her voice shakes. "Get out before I do something we'll both regret."
I go.
The door seals behind me. I stand in the corridor, blue blood drying on my face, her taste still in my mouth.
My marks are still glowing.
I can still feel her on the other side of that wall. The echo of what she's feeling: rage and want and something that might be the beginning of forgiveness.
