10. Malrec #2
I look at her properly then—really look, taking in the way moonlight catches in her hair and shadows emphasize the curve of her jaw. The way she moves beside me with unconscious grace, her posture relaxed in a way it rarely is during daylight hours.
And I'm hit with another one.
Not quite a dream. Not quite a memory. Something in between that slams into me with physical force.
This same path. This same moonlight. But Lenna leaning into my side, her shoulder pressing against my arm as we walk.
She's smiling up at me—that genuine warmth I've only seen her show the beasts—and I'm saying something that makes her laugh.
The sound fills the air between us, and my hand finds the small of her back automatically, pulling her closer.
She fits against me perfectly, like she's always belonged there.
I stumble slightly, the present snapping back into focus with disorienting abruptness. My breath comes shorter, and I have to consciously steady myself before continuing forward.
"Are you alright?" Lenna asks, concern threading through her voice. She's stopped walking, turned toward me with that observant attention she usually reserves for the beasts.
"Fine." The word comes out rougher than intended. "Just—tired. It's been a long day."
She studies me for a moment longer, and I feel that gaze like physical touch. Assessing. Reading. Seeing more than I'm comfortable showing.
"Why are you staring at me?" she asks quietly.
Because you feel like something I lost and can't remember losing. Because touching you during the binding ritual felt like coming home. Because I've been dreaming of you for weeks in contexts that shouldn't exist but feel more real than my waking life.
I don't say any of that. Can't say any of that without sounding completely unhinged.
Instead, I shake my head sharply, trying to dislodge the lingering impression of that vision—memory—whatever it was. "I'm not. I was just..." I trail off, because I have no good explanation for the way I've been looking at her.
But my body isn't listening to logic anymore.
I step toward her. One movement, closing the space between us without conscious decision. Just responding to that magnetic pull that's been building for weeks, that intensified the moment she arrived at my stables and proceeded to turn everything I thought I knew upside down.
Lenna's breath catches. I hear it clearly in the quiet night air, watch her chest rise and fall faster as I move closer still. She should step back. Should maintain appropriate distance and professional boundaries and all the structural safety we've been carefully preserving.
She doesn't.
Instead, she leans in. Just slightly, just enough that I feel the shift in the air between us, the way her body orients toward mine like she can't help it either.
We're too close now. Close enough that I can see the way her pupils have dilated, the way her lips part slightly as her breathing changes. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin, to catch the faint scent of her that's become so familiar from working in proximity all these weeks.
This makes no sense. We barely know each other. We've spent more time in mutual hostility than anything resembling comfort. By all rational measures, I should feel nothing for this human laborer beyond professional assessment of her utility.
But rational measures stopped applying weeks ago.
I raise my hand slowly, giving her time to pull away. To break this moment before it becomes something neither of us can take back.
She doesn't pull away.
My fingers brush her jaw, and the contact sends electricity racing through my entire system. That same overwhelming rightness from the binding ritual, but intensified now. More focused. More present.
Touching her feels right.
Her eyes lock onto mine, and I see my own confusion reflected there. The same disorientation, the same certainty that this shouldn't work but somehow does. Neither of us moves, caught in this suspended moment where everything feels balanced on a knife's edge.
Then she does something that breaks me completely.
She leans into my touch, her cheek pressing against my palm like she's seeking more contact. Seeking me.
I step closer still, until there's barely any space left between us. My other hand finds her waist—the curve of it fitting against my palm exactly as it did in the binding ritual, as it does in the dreams I can't escape.
"Lenna." Her name comes out rough, carrying all the questions I can't ask and confusion I can't articulate.
She tilts her face up toward mine, and the moonlight catches in her eyes. Makes them luminous and deep and full of the same longing I feel burning through my own chest.
I'm going to kiss her.
The realization hits with absolute clarity even as every logical part of my mind screams that this is wrong.
That we shouldn't like each other. That this attraction doesn't make sense given our history.
That I'm her superior and she's technically under my authority and there are about fifteen different protocols this would violate.
But none of that matters anymore.
Because she's leaning up into me, her hand coming to rest against my chest where my heart is beating far too fast. Because the way she's looking at me makes my breath stop entirely.
Because touching her like this—standing here with her in the moonlight while the rest of the world sleeps—feels more right than anything has felt in longer than I can remember.
I lower my head, watching her eyes flutter closed. My thumb brushes across her cheekbone, and she makes a small sound that destroys the last of my control.
When I kiss her, it feels exactly like the dreams.
No—it feels like those dreams were memories and this is confirmation.
Like I've kissed her a thousand times before and my body remembers even though my conscious mind insists this is new.
Her lips are soft and warm and she responds immediately, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt as she pulls herself closer.
I feel her everywhere. The press of her body against mine, the way her other hand slides up to cup the back of my neck, the small desperate sounds she makes as I deepen the kiss. All of it familiar. All of it impossible.
All of it completely, devastatingly right.
My arm tightens around her waist, pulling her flush against me as I kiss her harder.
She opens for me without hesitation, and the taste of her floods my senses.
Makes everything else fade into irrelevance—the auction, the estate, the careful distance we've been maintaining.
None of it exists anymore. Just this. Just her.
Just the overwhelming certainty that I've done this before, held her like this before, kissed her exactly like this in moments that should exist in my memory but don't.
Nothing makes sense.
But she does. Even if she shouldn't.