Chapter 14 Mia #2
My mouth goes dry. I take another step back and feel the glass barrier press against my spine. Nowhere left to go. He advances, slow and deliberate, until he’s standing right in front of me, close enough to smell him, feel the heat rolling off him in waves.
He could kill you, the thought flits across my brain. He could kill you before you’d even have a chance to act.
“Nate,” I say his real name, breathless and unsure.
“Mia.” He reaches up, and I flinch, but he only tucks a strand of wind-whipped hair behind my ear. His fingers graze my cheek, feather-light, and I feel it everywhere. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.” It’s a half truth.
“I’m sorry, I forgot,” he says, starting to take off his jacket. “Here, let me give—”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m fine. Please. I like the cold.”
And the last thing I need is to see him with one less layer of clothing right now. Besides, I’m burning up from the inside.
“We should go back,” I say. “People will notice we’re gone. Julia—”
“I don’t care about Julia.”
“The cameras—”
“I don’t care about the cameras.” He braces one hand on the barrier beside my head, caging me in, not touching, but close enough. “I don’t care about any of it. Not tonight.”
“What do you care about, then?”
The question slips out before I can stop it, and I watch something dark pass across his face, something hungry and desperate and almost frightening in its intensity.
“You know the answer, darlin’.”
Fuck.
I duck under his arm, escaping, and put several feet between us. My legs are still unsteady, the high heels and the vertigo mixing with a million other feelings, like arousal and fear and a desperate, aching loneliness I tried so hard to bury.
He wants me.
He actually wants me.
And I want him too, God help me. I want him so badly, it hurts deep inside, like I’m being stabbed with a hundred knives.
But I can’t have him. Can’t have anyone. That’s the curse I was born with, the poison my mother engineered into my blood before I even existed.
One kiss, and he dies.
One moment of weakness, and I become a murderer yet again.
And I know that is the point of all this, that if I ever find out Vanguard is more than he presents himself as, that he’s a weapon that could threaten humankind, that I am supposed to take him out, whether that be by a kiss or by any other means necessary.
It only makes all of this so much harder.
I walk to the opposite corner of the rooftop, wrapping my arms around myself against the wind. The city blurs through the poison tears I refuse to let fall. Behind me, I hear his footsteps again. Following. Always following.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quietly.
No, but I might hurt you.
“I know,” I say, though part of me doubts that still. I don’t turn around. “I just need a minute.”
“Take all the time you need.” A pause. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.
The silence stretches between us, filled with the distant sound of traffic and the whisper of wind through the gaps in the buildings.
I stare at the lights of Times Square, trying to get my breathing under control, trying to remember who I am and why I’m here.
I’m a spy. He’s a target. The target. This is a mission, not a romance, and whatever I’m feeling—whatever he’s feeling—can’t be allowed to compromise that.
I turn around, and he’s staring at me like I’m something he’s going to have, one way or another.
“Where are we right now?” I ask, because I need to say something normal, something that doesn’t acknowledge the electricity crackling between us, and I feel like Bayo would like to hear it.
“Top of 30 Rock.” He shrugs like this is normal, like we didn’t just fly here. Like he isn’t looking at me like he wants to devour me whole. “I come here sometimes, when I need to think.” He taps something on his watch, and a moment later, soft, familiar music drifts from the tiny speakers.
I blink. “Is that…ABBA?”
“The Winner Takes It All.” He extends his hand toward me, formal as a gentleman at a ball. “We got cut short at the gala. Dance with me?”
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about ABBA.”
I stare at him—this ridiculous, beautiful, impossible man—and feel the last of my resistance crumble. “You’re telling me America’s superhero, the genetically engineered savior of humankind, listens to ABBA?”
“My grandmother’s favorite.” Something soft crosses his face, making him look younger.
“Marianna. She was Swedish. Came over in the sixties as a child, married my grandfather, never quite lost the accent. Lived in Minnesota. She used to play their records while she baked cardamon buns—Super Trouper, Voulez-Vous, all of it, dancing around the kitchen with flour on her apron.” He pauses.
“We didn’t see her often, which was a shame.
She was the only good thing about my childhood. Died when I was twelve.”
The confession is tender against the soft strains of the song. Another piece of him, offered freely, not for my article, but for me and only me.
“She sounds wonderful,” I say softly.
“She was.” He’s still holding his hand out and flexes his fingers slightly. “So? One dance. No cameras, no crowds, no overlords. Just us.”
Bad idea, Mia. Remember what Bayo said.
I take his hand.
He pulls me close, one hand finding the small of my back again, palm warm against bare skin. The music swells—that aching, bittersweet melody I know from a thousand karaoke bars and wedding receptions—and we begin to move. Not the formal waltz from the gala, but something slower, more intimate.
The winner takes it all, the loser standing small…
“This is insane,” I murmur against his chest.
“Probably.”
“We’re dancing on the 30 Rock rooftop to ABBA.”
“We are.”
“After you flew me here without asking.”
“In my defense, you would’ve said no.”
“I would have,” I agree. And yet, for this one moment in time, I think I would have been wrong.
His hand tightens on my waist, and I feel the steady beat of his heart against my cheek. The city winks below, the wind whispering around us, and for now, none of it matters. Not the mission, not the secrets, not the poison in my blood that makes me a monster.
There’s just this.
Just him.
Just us.
The song is ending. The violins rise, that final, aching note hanging in the air, and then, silence.
I look up.
He looks down.
And before I can think, before I can stop him, before I can do anything at all, he kisses me.
The kiss is not gentle, not tentative. It’s demanding and desperate and hungry, his mouth claiming mine like he’s been dying for this, like he’s been holding himself back for weeks and finally, finally let go.
His hand cups the back of my head, fingers threading through my ruined hair, and he kisses me like the world is ending.
For a heartbeat, I let myself feel it. The heat. The need. The impossible miracle of someone’s lips on mine.
Then, reality crashes back.
Because my kiss always end in death.
I gasp and shove him away, my hands flat against his chest, my whole body trembling. My mouth is tingling—not from pleasure, but from terror—and I’m staring at his face, waiting for the twitch, the spasm, the first sign the poison is taking hold.
Four minutes. That’s how long Toby took. How long they all take. Four minutes from kiss to flatline.
“Mia?” He frowns, confusion replacing the heat in his eyes. “What—”
“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry—”
“You’re sorry? What? No, Mia, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He reaches for me, and I flinch like he’s burned me.
“Hey.” His voice is gentle now, concerned. “It’s okay. I couldn’t help myself. Terrible excuse, I know.”
You didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I let this happen. I let myself kill you.
“I just—I can’t—” I’m babbling, words tumbling over each other as I watch his face for any sign of distress.
His pupils. His breathing. The color of his skin.
Any second now, he’s going to start convulsing.
Any second now, I’m going to watch another person die. A person I actually have feelings for.
And yet, he’s still standing there, still frowning at me with those blue eyes, still breathing, still alive.
Nothing.
“Was it that bad?” he asks quietly as the seconds tick by.
I stare at him.
He’s not dying.
He’s not dying.