Soon #2
Rhain had spent his life doing what he was supposed to do, and inside those three hours he had decided to do the thing he wasn’t.
“Little Lamb,” he said as he bent his head.
His mouth touched the corner of mine first. The contact went down my spine like a wire pulled tight, ankle to scalp.
Not a kiss yet. A test of where I would let him be. Warm breath. The brush of his lower lip against the corner of mine. He stayed there. My breath caught.
Then his mouth slid over mine, slow and careful. His thumb traced once along my jaw, and the trace ran lower this time, and stayed. Heat gathered at the seam of my mouth, asking. My mouth softened under his without my permission. He felt the give. He didn’t take more.
He kept his mouth on mine until my breath had reorganized itself around the fact of his patience.
Then he eased back half an inch.
His thumb was still at my cheekbone. His eyes, pupils now slits, met mine, asking the question his mouth hadn’t.
I leaned toward him, and my mouth found his.
Rhain’s hand slid into my hair, and he moaned, rough. “Kjaere.”
The Norwegian landed somewhere south of my ribs.
He kissed me deeply, and he never hurried. His tongue passed the seam of my lips, and the drag of it inside my mouth was careful and taking all at once. The taste of him hit me. Cold air. Sharp green branches. Juniper. And beneath all of that, the dark heat of dragon under skin.
My breath went out of me. The hand I had been keeping at my side came up and caught the lapel of his coat. The wool gave under my fingers. The other hand had moved, without my noticing, to the side of his neck. I could feel his pulse against my palm.
A groan caught in his throat.
My pulse climbed into my throat, then dropped, where want gathered fast and heavy. Standing still took effort.
His taste landed and stayed.
The sound I made into his mouth was small and involuntary. He caught it. The hand in my hair tightened. The other hand at my jaw slid back along the line of my throat, slow, the slowness giving me a chance to pull away, and stopped at the side of my neck. He didn’t press. He kept the contact light.
He kissed me through it.
I don’t know how long we stood there. The corridor behind him had emptied of sound.
The enforcer at the end of the hall cleared his throat once.
Politely.
The window had run out at one. It was past one. Protocol was protocol, even when everyone involved had the good manners to hate it.
Rhain pulled back by the smallest amount. “Soon,” he said.
That was all.
He walked down the corridor with his hands back in his coat pockets, looking back once at me with a lopsided smile.
One of Yuki’s deputies stepped to my elbow before I closed the door. “A note arrived at the consulate gate this morning,” he said. “Addressed to the State Department translator currently at Ashenmere. Yuki’s office is holding it.”
He waited until I had registered the wording, then withdrew.
* * *
I sent word to Yuki and asked to meet. She didn’t ask why I had called. She walked in, set a folded sheet of paper on the small kitchen table, and waited.
I didn’t sit.
“I’ll take the phone.”
Yuki didn’t move.
“I’m not your asset,” I added. “I’m not your double agent. I’m not your operative. If Davis sends me a directive, the answer he gets is the answer I decide to send. You can monitor every word. You can’t edit one. You can’t send anything on my behalf without my knowledge.”
“Agreed.”
“You said you would block transmission only if it risks immediate war.”
“Yes.”
“Define immediate.”
“Seventy-two hours.”
“Define war.”
“Active hostilities between Ashenmere and any other clan or sovereign government.”
“That gives you a lot of room.”
“It gives both of us a lot of room. That’s the point.”
I looked at the paper between us.
Yuki slid it across the table.
I read it.
Miss Cordero — / Trust this finds you well. Items to discuss at your earliest convenience. / J. Davis.
“The note arrived at the consulate gate at oh-six-fourteen this morning,” Yuki said. “He sent it twenty minutes after your council update.”
“He has my schedule.”
“He has someone’s,” she said.
“I haven’t responded.”
“Good. I will.”
I picked the black phone up off the table.
“You understand what you’re doing?” Yuki asked.
“I’m giving Davis exactly the access he assumes he already has, and not one inch more.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m buying time.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m betting that the longer I stay in this compound, the more I’ll know what I’m willing to use that access for.”
Yuki tilted her chin a quarter inch.
“That’s the bet I would make.”
She rose. At the door, she paused. “Catalina.”
“Yes?”
“The note arrived on the morning of Lord Solberg’s access window. Davis is reading every cable that crosses the embassy. He likely knows what Rhain looked like leaving your corridor today.”
“I know.”
“He’ll use it.”
“I know.”
“You may wish to send him something before he decides which version of you to write down.”
She left.
I sat at the table with the phone in front of me.
Then I composed.
J. — Confirmed receipt. C.
Four words. One initial. The signature line was the only place I had decided anything yet, and I had decided it carefully. C not Catalina. C meant the field-channel handshake. Same protocol he had used. Same level of formality. A refusal to give him more of me than he had asked for.
I sent it.
The phone confirmed the transmission with a single chime, and the screen went black.
For a moment, I stayed where I was and looked at my reflection in the dark glass.
Message sent.
One controlled breach in a room full of them.
By three, I was in the library with three books spread across the table, all of them about the 1947 rival-clan war: two Norwegian historical surveys and the 1962 monograph I had already read, opened again to the page on Margot’s reported death.
The room was quiet. I heard Dominic before I saw him.
Not footsteps.
The bond.
It lifted a second before Dominic Graves walked in at three-twelve and stopped in the doorway with no appointment, no warning, and no visible doubt that he belonged exactly where he was.
“Dominic.”
“Catalina.”
“I’m working. You’re interrupting.”
“I know.” His shoulder stayed in the doorframe.
“And yet.”
“And yet.”
I set the pen down. “What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
“Why?”
He stepped into the room. “For two weeks, I have been giving you room to decide what to do with me because Yuki told me to,” he said.
“It has started to feel like another thing I am doing without asking you. So I am going to say the part she told me not to say. You can throw me out after. If you do, I will leave you alone for the night.”
It sounded reasonable.
“Proceed.”
He didn’t look away. “I am sorry I claimed you the way I did. In front of the council. In front of the cameras.” A pause. “I am not sorry the bond exists. I am sorry I made it public before it was yours.”
The agency would’ve had me take the apology and stay analytical.
I wasn’t analytical.
“That isn’t a full apology.”
“It is the only one I have.”
I looked at him for two seconds, then picked up the pen. “Then leave.”
“All right.” He made no movement to go.
I waited.
He remained exactly where he was. After a full minute, I looked up. “Dominic.”
“Catalina.”
“Stop.”
“I am stopped.”
“No. Stop doing this. Stop standing in my doorway. Stop walking the perimeter of the building I’m locked inside. Stop making every unlocked door feel supervised. Stop putting yourself between me and every decision I’m trying to make. Stop being in the bond every time I try to think clearly.”
Dominic took one step toward me.
“Dominic,” I started again, quieter this time.
“Mm.”
“Last night got out of hand.”
His body stilled. “Yes,” he said.
“I came to you angry. I kissed you angry. I let the bond get loud enough that it started making a very compelling argument for several decisions I hadn’t actually made yet.”
I looked down at the pen in my hand.
I had picked it up without noticing.
Wonderful. Armed with stationery.
Very normal woman. Very stable diplomatic incident.
“I still have a boyfriend,” I said, working hard not to replay the last time I had said this to him.
“And before you say anything,” I added, looking back at him, “you don’t get to correct the tense, and last night didn’t erase him.”
His jaw set.
Good.
Let him work for it.
“Last night doesn’t get to become a shortcut around him,” I said.
Dominic was very still now.
“I need to do the right thing,” I said.
Four stars for moral clarity. Zero stars for timing.
“I need to call him and tell him what I can tell him. I need to break up with him before I step into whatever this is with you.”
“Catalina.”
“No. I’m not finished.”
His mouth closed. Immediately.
“My body has been making decisions for me since the dining hall,” I said. “The bond has been making recommendations in a very loud voice. And the other night, I let it take the wheel because you were saying things like worship at two in the morning.”
His mouth moved a quarter inch.
“Don’t smile at me right now.”
The almost-smile vanished.
Smart man.
“I want you,” I said.
There.
“I want you,” I said again. “But I’m not going to let wanting you be the same thing as choosing you. I’m going to make a real decision with my brain attached.”
He held the look. “Good.”
That wasn’t the answer I expected. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all you have?”
“No.” His hands flexed once at his sides. “I want to tell you that the decision is already made.”
The line drew taut and went hot. “Dominic.”
“I know.” His voice did not rise. “I want to tell you that the bond knows. That I know. That every instinct in me has known since the receiving hall. I want to tell you that the man in Washington is already a past-tense problem and that everyone in this compound can smell it.”
My breath caught.
His eyes sharpened. “But I will not.” The heat in the room didn’t lessen. “Because you told me not to.”