“If something had happened to me,” she says, finishing it for me, “what?”
I hold her gaze. “Don’t do that again,” I say. Which is not an answer, but fuck it.
Vi looks at me, her exhaustion still there, as well as the dried blood beneath the gauze, and the bag of papers on her lap. But underneath all that, she sees me and reads what’s behind my scolding.
She sees I’m not angry she went. She sees I’m terrified she came back hurt.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Vi says. “The documents are real. They matter. And no one was going to get them for me.”
She’s right. That’s the part I can’t argue with. No one was going to get them for her because I said no. As a result, Armen worked around me, Rogue took his cues from the room, and the only person willing to walk into that section of the Rot and risk her safety for her dead father’s truth was Vi herself.
And Mara.
“You’re right,” I say.
Vi blinks. Whatever she was braced for, it wasn’t that.
“No one was going to get them for you. That’s partly on me.”
Rogue’s hand stills on the first aid kit and Mara’s eyes move between us.
“Next time,” I say, not looking at her, “I go with you.”
I leave the room before she can respond, before I can see her face, and before the thing I’m feeling gets any closer to the surface than it already is.
31
STING
I tryto breathe but I can’t.
The adrenaline isn’t gone, it’s just changed form. What was dread ten minutes ago has turned into something else, something with teeth, flooding my body with the chemical aftermath of thinking Vi could be dead.
The door opens and Vi steps into the corridor, closing the door behind her, gauze taped to her temple, her eyes locked on mine.
“Go back inside, Vi.”
She doesn’t. She walks toward me and closes the distance. She’s standing right in front of me, and I’m against the wall where there’s nowhere to go.
Her face is right there. Blood and gauze and those eyes that won’t leave me alone. She’s alive. She’s standing in front of me, alive, and I can smell the sweat on her skin and the antiseptic I just put on her wound.
I’m done.
It just happens. One second, I’m against the wall trying to hold it together and the next, my hands are on her, pulling her into me, my mouth on hers. Hard. Not gentle. Not careful. The kiss is rough and desperate and tastes like blood because her lip catches on my teeth. It doesn’t stop us.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Not pain, but something deeper. Her hands grab the front of my shirt, pulling me closer even though her body is pressed against mine from chest to hip. I’m hard already, instantly. I know she feels it because she rolls against me and I lose whatever was left of my self-control.
I push her back against the wall, my hands on her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise. She gasps and hooks one leg around my waist. Her fingers are in my hair, pulling, and her mouth is on my neck.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I say against her throat in a voice doesn’t sound like mine. “You went in there and you could have died. I would have?—”
“I didn’t die.”
“You could have.”
“I didn’t. I’m right here, Sting.”
She pulls my face to hers and kisses me again. Her tongue is in my mouth, her hips grinding against me. She pulls at my belt and once open, gets her hand inside and wraps it around my cock. I slam my palm against the wall beside her head because the sensation is so intense, I need something solid to hold onto.
