Page 59 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“Watch me what?” I demand, because if I stop talking I’ll cry and crying is dangerous in this room. “Watch me be traded like a crate of wine? Watch me put on a dress that weighs more than my spine so people will clap? Watch you become a rumor in my corridors because it’s tidy for the paperwork? No thank you.”
He takes a half-step toward me. Heat rolls off him—soap, oil, something that’s just him, metal-hot. “You think this is tidy?” he says, low, and the crack in his voice is a fault line. “You think this is easy?”
“I think it’s wrong,” I say, and he huffs a laugh so ugly I want to cup his face to keep it from leaving him that way.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, each word dragged over gravel. “I can’t stand where I stand and watch what I watch and keep my hands behind my back while the house rearranges the rest of your life without you in the room.”
“Thendon’tkeep your hands behind your back,” I shoot back, the room swimming in hot light. “Do something useful for once besides glower at shadows! Why do you HAVE to take this transfer?”
“Don’t—” He starts and stops, and the effort of not saying the thing tears his voice. He turns away, breath huge, then turns back because he’s never been a man to walk out of a fight he’s already inside. “Because it’s KILLING me,” he says, losing the leash, palms splayed on the workbench like he might snap it in half, “to see you with Kaspian every damn day when I?—”
“When you what?” I whisper, because my throat won’t do louder, because the rest of the world goes dim around the bright line of him finally on fire.
He looks at me like the old wars are back and this is the worst part of them. “When I—” He doesn’t finish. The word hangs between us like a drop about to fall.
“I’m going to need the word, Rayek,” I say, stepping into the space he keeps for discipline and duty and every good reason not to cross any more lines. My hand has climbed into the air of its own accord, palm open, fingers shaking. “Because we’re not coming back here. There is no tidy other side.”
His eyes go to my mouth, to my hand, to the slate still glaring in blue against my knuckles. He says my name like a warning, like a prayer, like the first time he dared test the syllable without a title: “Star?—”
The sound of it breaks whatever restraint I had left.
I don’t remember the moment we close; I only know I’m pressed to him, hip to hip, heat to heat, my fingers in the collar of his shirt, his hand at my face so careful I could weep. The slate clatters to the floor and keeps glowing, the transfer notice still staring up like a witness to a crime. “I hate you,” I say into his mouth, which means I love you, which means don’t leave me, which means don’t you dare. He swallows the words like they’re his and kisses me back like that’s the first true thing he’s been allowed to do in this house in years.
“Say it,” I gasps, palms sliding up the cords of his neck, thumbs brushing the rough along his jaw. “Say it right now or I will set this whole wing on fire.”
“I love you,” he says, finally, wrecked and low and carved out of him like a confession that saved a life and ruined a plan. His hands are gentle where they could be greedy; his mouth is reverent where it could be cruel. The armory is all metal smell and heat and the hiss of our breath; somewhere the inventory reader beeps because a blade has been moved from its slot. He kisses me like he’s starving and also like he’s afraid I’ll break, and the combination makes my bones hum.
“Good,” I say against his lips, and it sounds wild and satisfied and wrong for this room and exactly right for us. “Then don’t you dare go.”
His answer is not words. His answer is heat and hands and the way his chest drops a fraction as if something heavy just slid off and fell between us where it can’t live anymore. The world shrinks to teeth and tongue and the scrape of scar and the salt of his skin under my mouth; the edges of everything else go soft, even the stupid transfer notice still painting my ankles blue.
He kisses me like the cage never existed and I kiss him back like we’re the kind of thieves who steal keys and throw away maps, and for this breath, this minute, this mad, hot heartbeat, we are.
Metal in my mouth,lemon in my nose, his heat everywhere—then nothing but the sound we make.
“Rayek,” I murmur against him, the syllables breaking, half-swallowed, not elegant at all.
“Star,” he answers, not a title anywhere near it, and the way he says my name makes my spine sing.
Years collapse. He surges, I rise; we find the same rhythm because it’s the only one we’ve ever wanted. His hands slide into my hair—careful first, then not careful at all when I fist my fingers in his collar and pull him down to me like I have every right. The wall is cold at my back, stone biting through linen; his chest is furnace-hot against me, all scar and strength and restraint breaking. I taste salt, soap, the faint iron of my split lip; he tastes like steel warmed by sun and something that’s only him. The armory smells like oil and solvent and hot metal; our breath puts steam on that old air until it feels new.
“Tell me,” I whisper between kisses, because a lifetime of almosts means I’m greedy now. “Tell me again.”
“I love you,” he says, rough and low, as if the words are too big to fit in any language, and I make a sound I didn’t know I had for anything that wasn’t pain.
He lifts me like I weigh a rumor. My heels leave the floor and hook behind his hips on instinct; the wall thuds once with our combined stupidity and doesn’t fall, which is generous of it. His mouth is hungry and wild; mine is worse. I’m laughing into him and crying into him and neither is the polite, pretty kind. I slide my hands around the hard line of his neck, thumbs over the pulse there, greedy to feel it hammer. He presses me higher, broad palms spreading against my thighs, claws tucked with impossible care while the rest of him is done pretending to be a statue.
“Say you’re not leaving,” I breathe, forehead pressed to his, sweat slicking my hairline.
“I—” he starts, and I feel the word he wants to say war with the man who has always picked duty even when duty had bad manners. He doesn’t finish. He kisses me again, rougher, and the shard in me that’s been twisting for years finally slides free.
“Don’t stop,” I beg, and it’s raw and embarrassing and the truest thing I’ve ever put into the air.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” he says, and then he proves it.
We’re frantic, we’re idiots, we’re honest in a way we never get to be in daylight. His mouth moves to my jaw, to the bruise, to the corner of my mouth where it splits; he kisses like he’s apologizing to every injury and memorizing them in case he needs to take vengeance later. My hand finds the old scar at his brow and cups it like a relic. “Mine,” I say before my sense can throttle me. “Mine.”
“Yours,” he answers, unthinking, and it detonates something warm and terrible under my ribs.
