Page 187

“It is.”

“Answer.”

His lips pressed into a flat line. He looked past me, at the blank wall above my head, and I could almost hear the refusal forming in his throat—a clean, tactical denial. Then he didn’t say it. His gaze broke. Fell from the wall. Not to the floor, not to my eyes. To my mouth.

My next breath never came.

The air between us went thin and electric.

One moment we were standing apart.

The next, we weren’t.

His hand rose toward my face.

Stopped an inch short of my cheek.

He held it there. Didn’t close the gap.

I should have stepped back.

I didn’t.

I tipped my face toward his palm before he touched me.

Veyr stopped moving. Everything stopped—his breathing, the shift of his weight, the silver light beneath his skin.

His fingers came to rest against my jaw.

Warm. Slow. Two fingers first, then the whole of his hand.

He had never touched me like that before. Not when he carried me out of the bunker, not when he checked my pulse in the snow. This was not procedure. This was not a mission.

This was him deciding how to hold my face and taking his time with it.

My pulse beat where his thumb rested.

He did not look away from me. No jokes between us. No argument. No mission file, no dead records, no duty.

Just Veyr, watching my face while his hand cupped my cheek.

“Tell me to stop.”

His voice came out lower than I had ever heard it, rough at the edges, like he had been holding the words a long time before letting go.

I should have said it.

Instead I whispered, “I didn’t ask you to.”

His hand stayed where it was, warm against my jaw. He didn’t move to close the distance. He only looked at me, and the way he looked changed—the set of his mouth, the line between his eyebrows, like a man who had stopped arguing with himself.

Then he kissed me.

Not hard.

That surprised me.

I had expected Veyr to kiss like he fought. Controlled. Overwhelming. Certain. I had braced for it.