“It wasn’t wrong,” he said finally. “That’s the problem. It should have been wrong, but it wasn’t.”
“Because I’m inexperienced?”
“Because you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Then teach me.”
The words came out with unexpected certainty. She hadn’t known she was going to say them until they were already in the air, but now that they were spoken, she didn’t want to take them back.
His hands clenched at his sides. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I understand that I’ve spent twenty-one years in this tower, learning about the world through books and observations and an AI that lies to me.” She finished unbraiding her hair, letting it fall in thick golden waves down her back. “I understand that you’re the first real thing that’s ever happened to me. And I understand that whatever I’m feeling right now—this warmth, this pull, this need to be close to you—it’s the most alive I’ve ever felt in my life.”
He made a sound low in his throat. Not quite a groan, not quite a growl—something in between that sent a shiver down her spine.
“You’re making this very difficult,” he said.
“Good.” She took a step towards him. Then another. Until she was close enough to see the rapid pulse in his throat and the way his eyes gleamed in the dim light. “I want to make it difficult. I want you to feel what I’m feeling, even if I don’t have the words for it yet.”
“Liora...”
“Teach me,” she said again. “Please.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
The tower was quiet around them—ARIS silent for once, the jungle sounds muffled by stone walls. She could hear her own heartbeat drumming in her ears and feel the anticipation coiling in her stomach like a living thing.
Then he reached out.
His fingers brushed her cheek, callused and warm, impossibly gentle for such big hands. She leaned into the touch instinctively, her eyes fluttering half-closed.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he murmured. “You deserve someone who can give you more than I can. Someone who isn’t?—”
“I don’t want someone else.” She covered his hand with her own, pressing it more firmly against her face. “I want you. I don’t know why, and I don’t care why. I just know that this is right.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “I know things, Baylin. I observe and analyze and draw conclusions. That’s what I’ve done my entire life. And everything I’ve observed about you tells me that you’re good. That you’re safe. That I can trust you with... whatever this is.”
His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, feather-light. “You shouldn’t trust so easily.”
“Maybe. But I trust you anyway.”
Something shifted in his expression. The careful control he’d been maintaining cracked, just slightly, revealing the hunger beneath. She’d glimpsed it earlier, when she’d first kissed him. Now it was back, and it made her breath catch in her throat.
“One kiss,” he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “That’s all I can promise to control.”
“I don’t want you to control yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then show me.”
She rose up on her toes, but she didn’t close the final distance between them. Instead, she waited—giving him the choice, letting him be the one to decide.
The moment stretched. Stretched.
Then his other hand came up to cup the back of her head, fingers threading through her loose hair, and he pulled her in.
