Page 25 of Cold Ignition

Alexios shook his head immediately. “No. We stayed long enough to understand what it is, and get a handle on who’s at the top.”

Rangi glanced at him.

That was Alexios. Where Rangi analyzed, Alexios cut straight to truth. Together, they found balance.

A sound drifted up from somewhere below them. Both men went completely still. It was faint. Easy to miss if you weren’t listening for it.

Boots. On concrete. Rangi’s focus snapped sharp.

There. Again. Two sets. Slow. Measured. Searching.

Alexios’s hand moved without hesitation, fingers closing around his weapon as he shifted his weight slightly, angling himself toward the doorway.

Rangi lifted a hand, palm out.

Wait.

They listened.

The footsteps paused. Then resumed. A door somewhere below creaked open, hinges protesting in a long, drawn-out groan.

“They’re inside the perimeter,” Rangi murmured.

Alexios’s expression hardened. “How long?”

Rangi tilted his head, tracking the rhythm, the direction, the subtle echoes.

“Minutes,” he said. “Maybe less.”

Time, then, had run out.

Alexios shifted closer, their shoulders brushing in a way that was both instinctive and deliberate.

Rangi moved before he could overthink it.

His hand came up, fingers sliding along Alexios’s jaw before settling at the back of his neck, firm and sure, drawing him in with a familiarity that never needed permission. It was a hold Alexios knew better than his own breath—grounding, steadying, claiming in a way that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with them.

Then Rangi kissed him. Not rushed. Not tentative. Deep. Familiar.

The kind of kiss that carried years in it—trust, heat, history—all of it threading together in a way that settled something low in Alexios’s chest even as it set everything else alight. It didn’t matter how many times they had done this, how many years had passed with that same certainty between them.

Still pulled a sharp breath from him, still sent his pulse kicking harder, his body responding without hesitation as he leaned into it, one hand bracing lightly at Rangi’s side as the world narrowed down to just this.

Just them.

Rangi’s thumb shifted slightly against the back of his neck, a subtle pressure that grounded him even as it deepened the kiss, and Alexios felt himself soften into it, into the steadiness that had always been there, always would be there.

When they finally pulled apart, it wasn’t abrupt.

It never was.

Rangi lingered for a moment, their foreheads coming together as their breathing settled into the same rhythm, the quiet space between them filled with something softer now. Warmer.

Alexios huffed a quiet breath, the corner of his mouth lifting.

“You know,” he murmured, voice still roughened slightly, “for someone who says very little, you have a remarkably effective way of making a point.”

Rangi’s lips curved faintly. “You talk enough for both of us.”