Page 42 of Phoenix's Last Heist
I stare at his mouth, the way his full lips part in invitation.Stars,I want him. Even as I lust after this dark approximation of the ranger, something in me wants to bring back the old version—the honorable, upright, stalwart, pain-in-the-ass threat to my freedom. But I know if I kiss him, if I take him to bed, I’ll be taking more from him than he wants to give. I’d ruin him—and worse—something in me knows it would ruin me, too.
Then again, perhaps I’m already ruined.
“Does it look bad?” I ask quietly.
“No,” he murmurs. “But I hate that you were hurt at all. If I’d taken out Fobos earlier, like you suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t strike me as the ‘take him out’ type,” I say with a wry chuckle. “So you’re forgiven.”
“I told you before—I don’t relish taking lives. That doesn’t mean I haven’t, or that I won’t. Especially if something I care about is threatened,” he says.
Can he hear my heart hammering against my ribs? Mouth suddenly dry, I clear my throat and fight the blush heating my cheeks. “That’s thevelliatalking.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I scoff and his intense gaze bores into mine.
“Yes, yourvelliawants me to claim you—to throw you onto this floor, strip you bare, and fuck you with a desperation that staggers me, but I’m aware enough to know that I don’t need yourvelliain my blood to want you to be safe. To want you protected. To want you happy.” He swallows and stands, crossing to the worktable with his back to me, head hung in defeat. “To want you, full stop.”
I suck in a breath and let his words wash over me. For once, no smart retort jumps off my tongue. My heartbeat stutters—the only part of me that isn’t frozen by panic and fear. I don’t believe him, of course, despite the hopeless longing his words kick up.
“I’m sorry, Orion,” I whisper, humiliating tears pricking behind my eyes. “I just can’t believe that. I know you’re susceptible to myvellia. That’s what this is. You just think those things because that’s what happens—it’s desire and confusion and frustration because we’re always at each other’s throats. It’s not real. It never is.” Admitting that out loud guts me, and a tear spills down my cheek.
He whips around—his eyes back to their vibrant, sea-glass green, but the intensity still swirls in them. He stalks toward me.
“I don’t think you believe that,” he says. “That whatever this is between us is just chemical.”
“Yes, I do,” I whisper, another tear falling.
“Then you’re lying to yourself,” he says.
“Oh, please,” I sniff. “This whole time you’ve been calling me a criminal and a liar, telling me you hate me, threatening to turn me in to the Feds, and now you want me to believe you’ve been fighting some secret battle against wanting me.”
“I already lost that battle. Wanting you was never a question. When it comes to trusting you, however, I’m afraid I’m still at a bit of a stalemate,” he says, one corner of his mouth lifting in a heartbreaking lopsided grin.
“Oh, and I’m just supposed to trustyounot to tie me up again and hand me over to the Feds when you get what you want?” I ask breathlessly, mesmerized by the flickering purple synesfores scattered down his neck and throat, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. My hands have a mind of their own and they reach up to slowly pull the tie from beneath his collar.
The heat in his expression cranks my lust up to volcanic levels, but I can’t ignore the disappointment at hearing he still doesn’t trust me.
“I never said I wouldn’t tie you up again,” he says, his deep voice rumbling through my chest. “But it won’t be to give you to the Feds.”
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, all the reasons why I shouldn’t want this line up and sound off. I can’t trust him, we don’t want the same things, we’re too different. Neither of us can afford an entanglement longer than a few nights—not that I want that, anyway.
Liar.
The smart thing to do would be to walk away now, hightail it to Xylothia, and drop him off in that stars-forsaken jungle—with or without the idol, I haven’t decided.
But with his hand cupping my head, those deep emerald eyes fixed on my lips, and the firm length of his arousal pressing against my stomach, it strikes me that I’ve never really enjoyed doing the smart thing.
“You wouldn’t be saying this if you weren’t under the influence,” I argue, my last ditch effort to put a rational end to this.
“Maybe,” he murmurs. “Only one way to find out.”
“Oh?” We’re standing at a precipice—one I know will change everything between us, and probably damn us both.
“Kiss me and tell me it’s not real,” he challenges. “Tell me you don’t feel it, too.”
“I can’t,” I whisper, another tear falling. “And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”
