“It feels abrupt.” She clung to him a second too long. “After all we went through tonight.” Her heart ached thinking of never seeing him again after what they went through together.
“It's best this way. I leave for the territories in a few days. I can't help you again.” He shifted backward.
“Wait.” Fear crept over her at the thought of him in the chaos of war. It only strengthened the desperation to tug on this connection to him.
Mercifully, he stayed.
Her body hung back in those moments from the last hour when her foot slipped from the ledge of a building, and he caught her. Caught her and cradled her so tight after she almost fell that her skin still burned every place they touched. Tasting death sharpened all those feelings until they sliced through her usual reticence. Or had this pull just overpowered her?
“I wanted to kiss you back there.” Fear and thrill at speaking her desire stripped her voice to a rasped whisper.
Her stranger didn't abandon her, but his posture stayed rigid, offering her no way to read his response. “I know.”
Her heart pounded, so heavy and so loud it throbbed. Kira's look flitted to the glimpse of skin at his neck. The anonymity of his disguise lent her courage, too, as did the finality. Why shy away? “Did you want it too?”
Please give her any clue about how he felt. Any hint about whether the tug yanked the center of his spirit to hers, refusing to relent. Did his stare mean he wanted it too? That the warmth of their bodies flooded his skin right now, as well?
“You wouldn't kiss me if you knew me,” he said.
She refused to pivot. “You promised to tell me the truth.”
No hesitation despite the fact that he'd been so reluctant before. “I want to kiss you right now.”
That melting sensation trickled through her stomach, down into her knees. “Then why does that sound like a no?”
“I won't touch you with bloody hands.”
“So, keep your gloves on.” That sorrow he carried pinched her chest. “I don't need you to save me from yourself.”
This stilled him, until he angled his head.
Took one step toward her.
Another.
Oh, the torture of sensing his gaze, knowing his want, but not being able to see his eyes. She wilted against the rough trunk of the oak tree when he was close enough to touch, dizzy from his warmth. Never had she understood feeling the space between her and another, but something buzzed here. Something electric and deep and merciless. Something that left her feeling as if she had waited a long time for this even though she'd just met him.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Gaze stealing down him, she settled on the only human part of him bared to her and leaned forward. Pressed her lips to that opening between his collar and helmet, tasting his skin when she didn't know what he looked like. Then she looked up at him, unable to believe she had done that. “Yes.”
With two fingers sliding under her chin, he lifted her face, close enough that his chest might graze her with one deep breath. But the tiny space did not close. Not yet. “You keep fucking surprising me.”
His body eased her back against the tree. Kira gasped.
The fingers on her chin trailed tenderly along her jaw, up the side of her face, over her cheekbone.
And settled against her eyes.
“Don't look,” he commanded, not even saying please. But she did not intend to defy him on this.
His darkness no longer cloaked only him but everything in her world. And she wasn't afraid of it.
His helmet thudded on the ground. Anticipation and curiosity tickled the pit of her stomach, but the vulnerability of her stranger removing his mask stripped her breath away, even if she couldn't see.
She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, this time not to keep from falling off a building, but only to touch him—just this once before they said their goodbyes.
This feltincredible.
