Page 164 of You Only Love Twice
Gemma felt like a stripped-down version of herself as she primed her weapon on the top of the carriage. Usually she had nerves of steel before a mission, running through her checklist of weapons, and going over and over the mission details and map in her head.
But she kept getting this fluttery feeling in her chest, right beneath her diaphragm.
The Chameleon episode had broken some part of her, and she worried she'd never get it back.
"Are you all right?" Obsidian murmured.
He looked deadly in the formfitting black leather body armor he’d borrowed from the Nighthawks. Strands of ashen brown hair hung to his shoulders. The blond was starting to shine through the dye, like glints of moonlight woven through his hair.
"Are you?"
This was a direct strike at those he'd once considered brothers, after all. She knew how much he longed for family and acceptance, for something to belong to.
No matter whether he'd made the choice to throw his lot in with her and COR, there must still be a part of him that ached for the loss he was facing. Not a single hint of it marred his expression, but then it never did. She was slowly learning to read the minutest ticks of muscle in his jaw and around his eyes. The less emotion he showed, the more he felt, she suspected.
And this morning he was locked down tight, his expression as impenetrable as a vault.
"There's nothing there for me anymore. I don't even know if there ever was. My head's still a mess. I can't work out what's real and what is not." His lashes fluttered. "I saw Silas."
"And?"
Obsidian looked down, giving her hand a faint squeeze. "He set the fire in Russia in order to blame you. It was all a ploy designed to make me distrust you."
That had to hurt.
Gemma stroked his thumb. She understood what he wasn't saying. He'd loved her. And his brothers had seen her as such a threat to his loyalty, they'd engineered a way to fracture his belief in her. It was the missing piece to the puzzle. Everything that happened in Russia had been real. "I must have frightened them a great deal."
He looked up sharply.
"I'm sorry they went to such lengths." She bit her lower lip. "I'm sorry you lost so much because of me—"
"Not because of you," he said instantly, capturing her face with his other hand. "I won't have that. Ghost made his choices. This sits on his head. And I am going to remove it, as payment."
"And Silas?"
It was the one name that made his voice soften, though she wasn't certain if he was aware of it. "He's dead to me."
The same thing he'd said to her once.
"They took everything," he continued. "They took you. They took my memories of my mother. Everything."
"You're getting certain memories back," she said, squeezing his hand. "You can't expect it to happen overnight."
"What if I never get all of them back?"
Gemma scraped her fingers down his chest. There wasn't an inch of fat on him. Only muscle, thick and corded beneath the body armor. Hard. But there was a sense of vulnerability in his voice. "Then we create new ones," she whispered, reaching up and brushing her mouth to his.
Gemma cupped the back of his head and drew him down to her. The kiss felt achingly familiar, and yet somehow unique. Soft. Gentle. All things neither of them had shared with each other before.
She knew sex. She knew pleasure inside out, and exactly how to make a man fall to his knees. But she'd never known this before, not even in Russia.
Vulnerability. Affection. Love.
There were no more secrets between them. No reason not to give herself into his hands. And it was an utterly breathless feeling that made her tremble, despite the barely carnal nature of the kiss.
"Because our story isn't over," she whispered against his lips, as she twined her fingers through his hair. "Its just beginning,lyubov moya."
Someone coughed.
