Because the answer is complicated, and I don’t have language for it. Admitting anything feels like handing someone a blade and turning my back. Never in my life would I have ever thought such a thing would sound appealing, yet my fingers twitch to do just that. To take the blade from my sheath and place it in his palm, if only to see what he’d really do.
To prove to myself what I already know?
I swallow.
I don’t answer, but step in to him instead.
I rise on my toes and kiss him. Not the rough kind of kiss that I now see asours,that dirty, frantic territorial kind of kiss that tastes like violence and hunger. I’ve become obsessed with the way his lips devour mine. Maybe even obsessed, but this…shit.
He’s kissed me like I was breakable before. Once. But only a fool would pretend that this one right here isn’t something brand fucking new.
It is.
It’s a kiss I’ve never given anyone because I didn’t know I couldand I never had the urge to.
Legend makes a sound that vibrates into my mouth, and his hands find me like they’ve been searching for permission—one sliding to my waist, the other cupping the back of my head, holding me with a careful reverence that makes my throat ache.
Like he’s terrified of breaking me.
Like he’s more terrified of losing me.
My fingers curl into his shirt, pulling him closer, and the heat between us rises fast, thickening the air, turning the space into something private and dangerous. Legend deepens the kiss with slow patience and time we don’t have, like he’s trying to brand the moment into both of us before the world drags us back into blood, questions, and death.
When he finally pulls back, his forehead presses to mine.
His breath is warm against my lips.
His voice is rough.
“There,” he murmurs. “That. That’s why I don’t know how to accept the risk.”
My chest tightens, and I hate the softness clawing its way up my spine.
I try to cover it with sharpness. “You’re dramatic.”
“I’m honest,” he corrects, and his mouth brushes mine again, quick and controlled, a promise clipped short by restraint. “And you’re walking into something that I don’t know how to control. What if it reaches for you?”
My jaw ticks. “Let it reach.”
His grip on me tightens just slightly. “If you get hurt,” he says, quieter now, more lethal, “I will turn Rathe inside out.”
I should tell him I don’t need saving, remind him who I am, and what I survived. But the truth is, the idea of him being that furious on my behalf does something wicked to me. It makes me feel…chosen.
And that is its own kind of danger, because to want is to lose.
Maybe, for once, it doesn’t have to be?
I don’t know the answer, but it’s as if something inside me does.
I give him a small, infuriating smirk. “Then don’t let me get hurt.”
Legend’s mouth curves, fierce and satisfied, and for a second I see the possibility ofus. How ridiculous it is that I can stand here and let him touch me without immediately reaching for a blade.
Legend kisses my forehead and steps back with clear reluctance.
“After,” he repeats, eyes burning.
“After,” I agree again, and the way his pupils flare tells me he’s filing that word away like a vow.
