Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Will you stay with me tonight?”
The question slipped out before Liora had fully decided to ask it. She was still standing on the balcony, still processing the reality of that metal barrier sliding into place and the proof that her entire life had been a carefully constructed lie.
Baylin turned to look at her, his green eyes unreadable in the fading light. “If you want me to.”
“I do.” The words came easily. Naturally. As if there was no other possible answer. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. Not after... this.”
She gestured vaguely towards the blocked stairs, towards the jungle she couldn’t reach, towards everything that had shifted and cracked in the last few hours.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll stay.”
Relief washed through her, warm and unexpected in its intensity. She hadn’t realized how much she’d dreaded the alternative until he agreed. The thought of him descending into the jungle, leaving her alone with ARIS and its measured lies, had made something in her chest feel hollow.
“Good.” She managed a small smile. “Come on. I’ll show you where to sleep.”
Her bedroom was on the level below the greenhouse where her plants slumbered in the darkness.
She had always liked this room—the way moonlight filtered through the curved windows, the sound of wind against stone, the sense of being suspended between earth and sky.
It too had a balcony, but this one looked out over the ocean.
Now, watching him duck through the doorway and take in her personal space, she felt suddenly aware of how strange this all was. How extraordinary. Another person standing in her room. Looking at her things. Breathing her air.
“This is where you sleep?” he asked.
“Yes. The bed is large—my nursemaid said it was meant for my parents, originally. Before they...” She trailed off, uncertain how to finish that sentence. Before they died? Before they abandoned me here? Before Ari became my only family? “Anyway, there’s plenty of room.”
Something flickered across his face. “Liora—”
“Unless you prefer the floor? Some of the characters in my books sleep on the floor. There was a warrior in one story who said beds made him soft.” She tilted her head, studying him. “Is that a Vultor custom?”
“No. We have beds.” He shifted his weight, and for the first time since she’d met him, he looked genuinely uncertain. “But I shouldn’t share yours.”
“Why not?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “It isn’t... appropriate.”
“Appropriate according to whom?”
“According to—” He made a frustrated gesture. “According to custom. To the way things are done.”
“But I’ve never done things according to custom.” She moved towards the bed, beginning to unfasten the clips that held her hair in its braid. “You’re the first person I’ve ever invited to stay with me. There’s no precedent for what’s appropriate.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
She paused, her fingers tangled in blonde strands. “I don’t understand.”
He exhaled slowly, his shoulders tight with tension. In the moonlight streaming through the windows the scars on his arms stood out like silver threads, evidence of a life she could only imagine.
“When males and females share a bed,” he said carefully, “there are... expectations. Implications. Things that might happen.”
“Things like kissing?”
His jaw tightened. “Among other things.”
Other things. The phrase hung in the air between them, heavy with a meaning she didn’t fully grasp. But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.
“I liked kissing you,” she said. “Earlier, I mean. Before you called it a mistake.”
“Liora—”
“Was it really a mistake? You said so, but you didn’t explain why. I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t figure out what was wrong about it. It felt good, and I felt you respond. So why was it wrong?”
He was very still. The kind of stillness she’d seen in predators just before they struck.
“It wasn’t wrong,” he said finally. “That’s the problem. It should have been wrong, but it wasn’t.”
“Because I’m inexperienced?”
“Because you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Then teach me.”
The words came out with unexpected certainty. She hadn’t known she was going to say them until they were already in the air, but now that they were spoken, she didn’t want to take them back.
His hands clenched at his sides. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I understand that I’ve spent twenty-one years in this tower, learning about the world through books and observations and an AI that lies to me.
” She finished unbraiding her hair, letting it fall in thick golden waves down her back.
“I understand that you’re the first real thing that’s ever happened to me.
And I understand that whatever I’m feeling right now—this warmth, this pull, this need to be close to you—it’s the most alive I’ve ever felt in my life. ”
He made a sound low in his throat. Not quite a groan, not quite a growl—something in between that sent a shiver down her spine.
“You’re making this very difficult,” he said.
“Good.” She took a step towards him. Then another. Until she was close enough to see the rapid pulse in his throat and the way his eyes gleamed in the dim light. “I want to make it difficult. I want you to feel what I’m feeling, even if I don’t have the words for it yet.”
“Liora...”
“Teach me,” she said again. “Please.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
The tower was quiet around them—ARIS silent for once, the jungle sounds muffled by stone walls. She could hear her own heartbeat drumming in her ears and feel the anticipation coiling in her stomach like a living thing.
Then he reached out.
His fingers brushed her cheek, callused and warm, impossibly gentle for such big hands. She leaned into the touch instinctively, her eyes fluttering half-closed.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he murmured. “You deserve someone who can give you more than I can. Someone who isn’t—”
“I don’t want someone else.” She covered his hand with her own, pressing it more firmly against her face. “I want you. I don’t know why, and I don’t care why. I just know that this is right.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “I know things, Baylin. I observe and analyze and draw conclusions. That’s what I’ve done my entire life. And everything I’ve observed about you tells me that you’re good. That you’re safe. That I can trust you with... whatever this is.”
His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, feather-light. “You shouldn’t trust so easily.”
“Maybe. But I trust you anyway.”
Something shifted in his expression. The careful control he’d been maintaining cracked, just slightly, revealing the hunger beneath. She’d glimpsed it earlier, when she’d first kissed him. Now it was back, and it made her breath catch in her throat.
“One kiss,” he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “That’s all I can promise to control.”
“I don’t want you to control yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then show me.”
She rose up on her toes, but she didn’t close the final distance between them. Instead, she waited—giving him the choice, letting him be the one to decide.
The moment stretched. Stretched.
Then his other hand came up to cup the back of her head, fingers threading through her loose hair, and he pulled her in.
This kiss was nothing like the first one.
The first had been quick. Impulsive. A brush of lips that was over almost before it began.
This... this was something else entirely.
His mouth moved against hers slowly, deliberately, like he was savoring every point of contact. She felt the press of his lips, the gentle scrape of his teeth against her lower lip, the soft warmth of his tongue tracing the seam of her mouth.
Oh.
She parted her lips instinctively, and the kiss deepened.
Heat flooded through her, starting at the point where their mouths met and spreading outwards like ripples in water. Her hands found his chest, palms flat against the hard muscle beneath his shirt, and she felt his heart pounding nearly as fast as her own.
He feels it too, she realized. This pull. This need. It’s not just me.
The knowledge emboldened her. She pressed closer, eliminating the last few inches of space between them, and felt a rumble vibrate through his chest—that same low sound he’d made earlier, half-groan and half-growl.
His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer until she was flush against him.
She felt almost fragile against the breadth of his body, but there was nothing threatening about the stark difference in their sizes.
Only warmth. Only strength. Only the intoxicating sense of being held by someone who wanted her.
Wanted. The word echoed through her mind. She’d never been wanted before. Not like this.
“Baylin,” she breathed against his mouth.
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His eyes glowed green and his breathing was ragged, his control visibly fraying.
“We should stop,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t stop now, I won’t be able to stop later.”
She considered this. Considered the heat coursing through her veins, the ache building low in her belly, the desperate need to be closer to him than she already was.
“What happens later?” she asked. “The other things you mentioned. What are they?”
His hand flexed against her lower back. “You don’t know?”
“I know the basics. I’ve read medical texts, biology books. I understand the mechanics of reproduction.” She tilted her head, studying his face. “But the books never explained what it feels like. The emotions. The sensations. The way my skin seems to come alive everywhere you’re touching me.”
A harsh exhale escaped him. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“I hope not. I like having you alive.”
he gave a surprised laugh, rough and genuine. It transformed his face, softening the hard lines and making him look younger. Lighter. More like the man he might have been if life had been kinder.
“You’re remarkable,” he said. “Do you know that? Absolutely remarkable.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s terrifying.” His thumb traced slow circles against her hip, even as his other hand remained tangled in her hair. “You make me feel things I thought I’d buried years ago. Things I wasn’t sure I could still feel.”
“What kind of things?”
“Want.” The word was low. Intimate. “Hope. The possibility of something I’d given up on.”
“What did you give up on?”
“Belonging somewhere. With someone.”
Her heart clenched. She thought of him traveling alone, hunting and surviving and carrying the weight of whatever had driven him from his pack. She thought of herself in this tower, surrounded by books and plants and an AI that had lied to her for her entire life.
Two people who’d been alone, finding each other in the middle of nowhere.
“You belong here,” she said. “With me. For as long as you want to stay.”
Something flickered in his eyes—vulnerability, quickly masked. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough. And I want to know more.” She reached up and traced the scar on his face, the one that ran from his temple to his jaw.
“I want to know everything about you. Where you came from, what you’ve done, what you dream about.
I want to learn you the way I’ve learned my plants—every detail, every variation, every secret. ”
“And what if you don’t like what you find?”
“Then I’ll still want to know.” She smiled up at him. “Knowledge is never wasted. And I have a feeling I’ll like what I find very much.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, with a sound that might have been surrender, he kissed her again.