We stay like this for a long time. Tangled together. Vulnerable. Exposed.
I lift my head.
He’s watching me with a possessive intensity that should frighten me. He reaches up and brushes a damp strand of hair from my forehead.
“You chose this,” he says softly. “You chose me.”
“I know.”
And I do.
I chose the criminal. I chose the monster.
Because when the darkness came for me, he was the only one who burned bright enough to keep it back.
I ease my head back down against his uninjured side, listening to the steady, exhausted beat of his heart.
I close my eyes and let the sleep pull me under.
24
CASSIAN
I wake to the sensation of warm skin pressed against my side.
The harsh glare of the bunker’s main server room is blocked by the door, leaving the inner quarters bathed in a dim twilight. I lie flat on my back on the narrow mattress, staring at the raw concrete ceiling, feeling the steady rise and fall of the girl sleeping against me.
Her leg is tangled with mine, her bare knee resting intimately over my thigh. One of her arms is draped across my torso, her fingers curled loosely against my chest. Her face is buried in the crook of my neck, her breath a soft, warm cadence against my collarbone.
She smells like sex, sweat, and the faint, lingering trace of the cedar soap I keep in the bunker’s shower.
My left shoulder throbs with a dull, sickening ache. The painkillers I dry-swallowed last night have worn off. The torn muscle burns with a vicious heat every time I take a shallow breath. But the physical pain is nothing compared to the crushing, suffocating weight settling in my chest.
She shifts, a soft murmur escaping her bruised lips.
The blankets are tangled around her waist, leaving her back bare to the cool air of the room. I can see the faint, fading red marks of my fingerprints marring the skin of her hips.
I left my mark on her. I took her fear, her desperation, her anger, and I consumed it, matching it with my own dark hunger. Last night was a collision. It was madness. I broke the cardinal rule of my existence. I slept with a hostage. I let someone past the armor.
And I don’t regret a single second of it.
Her eyelashes flutter against my skin. She blinks against the dim light, her eyes heavy with sleep. She doesn’t pull away when she registers the hard lines of my body. She doesn’t scramble to the edge of the mattress or look at me with the wide, suffocating terror that has defined her since the night at the museum.
Instead, she tilts her head, her gaze tracking slowly up my jaw to meet my eyes.
A small, fragile smile touches her lips. It’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen.
“You’re awake,” she whispers. Her voice is thick with sleep, raspy and torn from screaming my name in the dark.
“I’m awake,” I say.
She shifts her weight, sliding her hand flat across my chest. She traces the outline of a faded knife scar on my pectoral, her touch feather-light and gentle. There is no hesitation in her fingers anymore. The fear of her captor is entirely gone.
“It’s quiet,” she notes, listening to the muffled, mechanical hum of the air recyclers. “Did they come back?”
“No. The perimeter is secure.”
She lets out a long, shaky sigh of relief. Her body physically sags against mine, the last lingering, toxic remnants of her adrenaline finally evaporating. She rests her chin on my chest, looking up at me with an expression of pure trust.
