Thirteen #2
“Isn’t it?” he asks lightly. “That’s not what your eyes say.”
“My eyes are fine. You’re the one who stares at people like they’re a puzzle you’re trying to take apart.” He hums, taking a few more steps closer. There’s just enough light to see his mouth now and the curve of his lip.
“How do you know what my eyes do?” he asks. “Have you been looking at me, Caiden?”
“I don’t look at you.” I snap.
He laughs quietly. “You are such a bad liar.”
“Do you follow all your allies into dark sheds, or am I just special?”
“You’re very special,” he says without missing a beat. “It’s... alarming.”
“That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“It means,” he says, taking another step, “that you keep walking away every time I get close enough to see what’s actually going on in that overworked brain of yours.”
“I walk away because you’re a menace,” I snap. “You don’t know when to stop.” He’s close enough now that I can see his eyes clearly, even in this shit light.
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you don’t know what to do with yourself when I keep going.”
“Fuck off,” I breathe out.
“Make me.” The words hang there between us, and something in me snaps.
My hand hits his chest, shoving him backwards.
He takes a step back, more out of surprise than force.
“What do you want from me?” I demand. My voice sounds raw even to my own ears.
“You’ve been in my space since the briefing.
You’re in my head when I’m trying to sleep.
You get in my face every time I try to do my job, and then you act like I’m the crazy one for not enjoying it. ”
He looks down at my hand that’s still flat against his chest, then back up. I can feel his heart racing under my fingers. “There it is,” he says softly.
“There what is?” I spit.
“Some honesty.” He says, leaning in slightly.
My hand ends up pushing harder into the muscle, but he doesn’t move away. If anything, he angles into it. “You want honesty?” I say. “Fine. I don’t know if I want to punch you in the throat or—” I cut myself off.
Shit.
“Or?” he prompts, smiling slowly, like I’ve handed him a present.
I grit my teeth. “Shut up.”
“Or... what, Caiden?”
Hearing my name in his mouth like that shreds something, and heat shoots down my back. I shove him again, harder. He hits the metal frame of another shelving unit with a dull clang, and a couple of helmets rattle in their nets above his head.
“You’re impossible,” I say.
“And you’re drunk,” he counters.
“I’m not that drunk.”
“You’re drunk enough that you stopped running,” he says. “You’d never let me get this close if you were fully in control.”
“You’re not close.”
He huffs, then he reaches out, grabs a fistful of my T-shirt at the chest, and yanks. I stumble forward into him and our bodies collide — his chest, my chest, hips, thighs, all points of contact, sudden and full.
“Now I’m close,” he whispers. My brain cuts out for a second.
My hands end up on his shoulders, then his neck, because I have to put them somewhere or I’ll do something stupid.
“You really want to fight in a room full of steel and sharp corners?” he asks.
His voice is softer and more dangerous. “You’ll hurt yourself. ”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say, and it comes out shakier than I’d like.
“That’s the second-worst lie you’ve told me tonight,” he laughs.
“What’s the first?”
“That you don’t look at me,” he says.
This is bad. I should step back. Instead, I tighten my grip.
My fingers dig into the warm line of his neck.
His breath catches, then his hand slides from my shirt to my waist, his fingers splaying over my hip like he’s claiming ground.
It’s possessive, infuriating, and makes my stomach drop out all at once.
“Let me go,” I say.
“Make me,” he repeats. The second snap isn’t anger exactly. It’s a surge, a wave, and the thing I’ve been holding back since the first time he put his hands on me in training, then grinned like he knew what that did to me.
I try to move quickly, but it’s too messy, and I twist, trying to shift him and put him against the wall.
He anticipates it, but the alcohol slows him down a little.
For a second, I win. We crash into the shelving, and objects clatter to the floor.
My body presses him into the rack, caging him there.
One hand ends up gripping his throat, and the other grabs his wrist to pin it to the metal behind him.
His head hits the shelf behind him with a dull thunk, and he laughs. “Careful, detka,” he says, his breath warm on my face. “You’re going to make me think you enjoy this.”
“I don’t,” I say. My voice sounds rough and frayed. His free hand — the one I didn’t catch — slides around me, his fingers locking at the small of my back. There’s no space left between us.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his breath hitting my lips on the question. I’m close enough to see every detail of his face. The cut on his lower lip, the tiny freckle near the corner of his mouth, the faint stubble on his jaw.
I hate him. I want him. Both truths sit in my chest like two parts of the same ache.
“Stop doing this,” I say.
“Stop doing what?” he asks, genuinely curious.
“I don’t know what...” I trail off because I don’t have a word for what this is. I need him to stop everything. The goading, the touching, the way he looks at me like he can see straight through the uniform and the rank and down into the ugly bits I don’t show anyone.
My fingers are still around his wrist. I can feel his pulse sprinting under my thumb, matching mine beat for beat.
“Say it,” he murmurs. “For once.” The shed is so quiet suddenly. The distant base noise might as well be on another planet.
“I don’t know what the fuck this is,” I whisper. It feels like ripping a bandage off. “I don’t know if I want to break your nose—”
His gaze drops to my mouth, and I feel it everywhere like a physical touch. He sees it, of course he does. He’s a hawk, always has been, tracking every flicker, every giveaway.
“Or...” he says quietly his fingers flexing on my back.
“Or kiss you,” I choke out. “Happy now?”
“Very,” he says softly. My heart trips when he tips his head.
It’s not much, not enough to be undeniable, but just enough to shift the angle.
Our noses nearly bump together, and my breathing goes shallow.
We’re both standing on the edge of something.
I can feel it like a cliff under my feet, all drop, and no handrails.
His eyes flick from mine to my mouth and back. His lips part on a breath, and I feel it fan over my skin. We hang there, suspended, mouths a breath apart, hearts hammering against each other through layers of cotton and stubbornness.
His fingers on my back tighten, causing my fingers on his neck to do the same, and my thumb unconsciously strokes the tendon there. He swallows, and his throat shifts under my palm.
“Caiden,” he says softly. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard my name spoken that gently. I close my eyes for a second because looking at him this close is too much.
In that darkness, with only the feel of his body pressed full-length against mine, it would be so easy to tilt my head that last little bit. To close the gap, finally stop wondering what he tastes like and find out.
His lips ghost mine with a whisper of contact, making my whole body light up. Then I jerk back. Not because I don’t want it.
Because I’ve never wanted anything like this, and that terrifies me more than anything I’ve been shot at with.