Chapter 17 #4
"Kit," Rin breathed, "we can’t."
He ripped away from her like he’d been burned.
He was breathing raggedly. He turned and paced, mumbling something under his breath, hands flexing at his sides.
His eyes swung back to her, and her gown was high on her thighs, nearly at her hips. The scar was covered—but they both knew it was there. Her eyes felt swollen from tears and lack of restful sleep. She wiped at them, and that was what made Kit break.
She flinched as he spun to the dark, glossy mirror on the wall.
Kit slammed his palms on it. It shook, but didn’t crack. Reinforced. He did it again. And again. Rin feared that the very walls would cave.
"I will not be with her!" Kit roared, rattling the mirror.
But it was no normal mirror, she realized, as Kit yelled. It was a two-way mirror.
Something crackled. "You will," came a disconnected voice.
Rin’s eyes scoured the room. In the corner of the ceiling, she saw a small speaker.
Through his tight armor, she saw his back muscles flex as he kept his hands on the mirror, his head falling onto it. The sound of his labored breathing echoed in the tight room.
A sudden, hot, heavy pain made Rin’s muscles lock up. Her entire body felt like it was being set on fire. She knew this pain. She’d experienced it before. Electro-shocks.
Her body stiffened as she fell back against the wall.
Her jaw locked up, and she couldn’t make a sound, but Kit was attuned to everything, a predator.
He heard the wheeze of air drawn past her parted lips, and he turned swiftly—only to find her spasming form.
By the time he got to her, it had stopped.
Kit crouched on his knees on the bed before her, hands hovering in the air as if afraid to touch her.
Rin was panting as she tried to sit up. Her neck felt tender and swollen. Her lips were dry, and her fingers trembled violently as she reached up to touch the collar at her throat. "I-I-I th—think that—" She could barely speak.
"Vesperin." Kit touched her shoulder.
The voice came again, interrupting them. It was feminine, yet none that Rin had heard before. "You will be with her. If you do not…"
Rin jolted as another, smaller shock ripped through her. She gave a pained, choked cry, curling forward into Kit’s chest, unbidden. When it was over, she breathed heavily from exertion.
Kit’s arms were rigid at his side.
"The shock collar is to keep you in line, Phoenix," the woman’s voice echoed through the room.
"There is also a bomb embedded within it. If you try to remove or tamper with it, it will detonate, killing her instantly. We want to see how much she means to you—whether you can override your conditioning and still protect her… or if you will do what you were built for. If you pass, you can keep her. If not, you will take care of that, I’m sure.
We will be monitoring your neural responses to her presence.
You have six hours to engage in sexual intercourse.
After that, we will kill her." The line went dead.
Rin panicked, reaching up to claw at the collar. "N-no, no." Her movements were still jerky with the lingering effects of the shocks.
Kit grabbed her wrists in one hand, pulling them away from the collar. "No," he snapped. "You will not—die."
"They’re going to b-blow my head off, Kit. They’re going to kill me—"
He shook her hands, and she felt her teeth click together from the force of it. It rattled something within her, making her stop her panicking and meet his eyes.
Their noses brushed.
"I will not let you die," Kit said to her.
She swallowed, feeling the collar cut into her throat. "How can you say that?" Her mind spun. "They want you to hurt me. That’s what this is about. To prove that whatever they did to you worked. They want you to try and"—she couldn’t say it—"be with me, and hurt me."
Kit was silent, still holding her wrists. His fingers tapped against the bones on the back of her hand.
He wasn’t like she thought he would be once he finally got his hands on her. All this time, since he had found her at the graveyard—or even before, when he had… tortured her—he had seemed violent, like he wanted to kill her. Yet now, she was here in his arms, he held her, watched her cry.
"Will you?" Rin prodded. "Hurt me?"
"I do not know."
"Do you want to?"
"No—I do not know. I will not let you die," he repeated.
"If anyone kills you, it will be me." He got so close that she felt the puff of air of his breath against her lips.
She trembled in his hold. She was realizing what her options were.
Which death would be better… "And I do not want to kill you. I don’t," he stressed, as if he were trying to assure himself more than her.
She was seeing bits and broken pieces of the man she once knew.
She felt the clock ticking, each breath like her last. She didn’t want it to be.
She reached up, and his eyes tracked her every move.
Her palms hovered over Kit’s face. He was frozen, and so she touched him.
She cradled his jaw, softly at first, but when he still did not move, she touched him more firmly, as if that grounding touch was the only thing that would get through to him.
Kit’s breath hit her palm as he turned his head into her touch.
And she knew then:
"You won’t kill me."
Kit’s lashes brushed his cheeks as he blinked and looked over at her. "Why?" He seemed desperate to know.
Maybe the shadows that drew closer in the corners were all the answer either one of them needed.
Rin’s forehead fell against Kit’s. They breathed together, him kneeling before her, her caged against the wall.
He was frozen like a statue. He wouldn’t move.
She kept waiting for him to, but he never did.
She waited until her legs grew numb, tucked beneath her.
It was as though he held onto control down to every last nerve ending.
If he used only one to shift, it would break—and she would bear the consequence of that lost control.
Knowing he wouldn’t move, she did for him.
Slowly, Rin shifted down until she lay stretched out on the bed. Each movement made the collar dig into the base of her throat; especially so as she lay flat, it felt like a weight pressing down on her throat, making her breath come short.
Her side was flush against the cool wall, and Kit’s hand fell to the mattress beside her head, making it dip. He loomed over her.
"What are you doing?" Kit bit out. She grabbed his hand on instinct. It was cold even through his glove. Hard, too. He looked down at where she held him, his brown hair falling into his eyes. "I can’t feel you."
Her fingers shook as she reached for his glove. He didn’t stop her as she slowly pulled it away. Beneath, he was no flesh-and-bone man. Dark, sleek metal. His fingers flexed as she traced them.
"They did this to you?" she asked.
"Yes. You want to give in to them? You want me to—have sex with you? I am a monster."
She was shaking her head. "You’re what they made you. You don’t have—"
"No." The word was low, yet it pierced her like a blade. His hand wrapped around her throat, right below the collar. He pinned her to the mattress. She felt the strength in his touch. "I will crush you." The tendons in his neck strained as he held himself back.
In fear, her breaths were light and quick.
"They cut me open. Like they cut you open. You can’t be stitched back together again." His hand tightened. "I have to. We have to," he mumbled. "If you die, I will not—survive."
He let her go, then.
He removed his other glove. His flesh was real.
The hands she remembered—that would flick the tip of her nose or tap along his jaw as he was deep in thought.
Then he unhooked a small strap beneath his arms. His armor plate loosened.
He dropped it to the ground with a dull thud.
Beneath, he wore a skintight black shirt.
His breathing was measured, every movement precise.
She started to sit up, but he placed his bare—real—palm on her shoulder, forcing her back. "Stay."
Kneeling up on the mattress, he then tugged off his shirt.
Bare-chested, she could only stare at him.
His right arm was utterly gone; in its place was a sleek metal prosthetic.
At the crease of the elbow and shoulder joint, small blue veins of liquid pulsed.
It was fused to his shoulder, the place where it met his flesh seamless. More metal was grafted over his ribs.
"This is who you let into your body," Kit forced out through clenched teeth. He raised his right hand, staring at the curl of the prosthetic’s fingers.
"A monster." His eyes squeezed shut, brows furrowing.
"I will not let you die." When he opened his eyes, he quickly removed his pants.
He was utterly bare, kneeling on the bed.
A litany of scars, both old and new. Metal and flesh. And staring at her like he wanted to crush her in his fake fist.
He was not hard.
He reached down to take himself in his hand. He stroked himself roughly, methodically, refusing to look at her. He used his prosthetic, and the metal was unnatural against his flesh.
Something was being stolen from them both. He didn’t seem to take pleasure in what he was doing. He growled under his breath, motions speeding up. It didn’t seem to work.
He needed to be distracted.
"Do you remember our past?" Rin asked quietly.
Kit met her eyes, then glanced down to her collar. "Sometimes. They tried to take it away."
She wasn’t sure if he was a virgin in this life.
In their two other lives, they’d had each other, time and time again, she remembered.
Even if he had never been with anyone in this life, his body still knew what to do.
Even if they had taken his memories of their past, his body still knew hers—his Soul still called to hers.
Eventually, he hardened from his touch; though, she liked to think it was from the sound of her voice.
He was silent as he moved over her.