33. Chapter 33
Chapter thirty-three
The kiss is sweet honey in the hot Texas sun, and yet still as dark and lawless as the forbidden fruit I know I am to him.
He’s not supposed to kiss me. He’s supposed to kill me, and the very idea should terrify me, and this kiss should read like manipulation, like the danger I know him to be to me, but the idea that he wants me despite the risk drives me wild.
I moan with the silk of his tongue, with his touch sliding possessively over my body.
I tug at his shirt, my palm seeking the taut muscle and skin, heat spreading up my arm, but only then do I realize that I’m pressed against the lighthouse.
We moved.
He rifted us.
Maybe I rifted us?
It's just enough of a jolt for me to press my hands to his hard, warm chest and issue a warning. “This is dangerous.” But I don’t push him away.
And I don’t want him to push me away. Somehow, if I’m safe enough for him, I’m safe enough for the world, which is validation I shouldn’t need.
I know who I am, who I’ve always been. I know I will protect the innocent, not kill them.
No fortune teller or book will tell me otherwise.
His fingers press to my neck as he drags my mouth close. “What if I like to live dangerously?”
The question is a blade slicing through me, drawing blood.
This is not the response I want from him, not even close.
In fact, it’s almost validation of the darkness inside me, almost a declaration that I cannot be fixed.
I want a better answer. I demand a better answer, and I push for it.
“What if people die because you’re distracted from your duty? ”
“I don’t see it that way at all. And neither would you if you read the damn book.”
His words hit me all kinds of wrong all over again—I’m not the sum of pages in a book—but damn it, he’s kissing me, distracting me, his mouth slanting over mine, his tongue a silky whip of demand.
I moan with the impact, but my mind is working in overdrive.
Are we following a playbook? Is he supposed to kiss me? Does he want to kiss me?
That’s it. I’m done.
I shove him away with a fierceness he cannot ignore. He draws back, his eyes sharp when they meet mine, a question in their depths that I don’t allow him the chance to voice. “Is there a timeline for a second kiss I should read in the book? Are you doing what it tells you to do?”
“The book doesn’t say anything about kissing you, Ember.”
“Just killing me, right?”
“Stop,” he breathes out, a command in the depths of his voice. “Stop doing that to us. Stop doing it to yourself.”
“Tell me what the book says.”
His lips press together. “I can only tell you how it reads to me.”
“Then tell me already. How is it bad for me to hear it from someone who understands this war far more than I can at this point? How?”
“Fine then,” he says tightly. “It doesn’t give two shits about me. It’s all about you. You’re the beginning or the end, Ember. I’m just a soldier in an age-old war of good versus evil.”
“Destined to kill me.”
“No,” he says firmly. “It doesn’t say that.”
“And yet, we’re connected by this place.”
“Yes. We are.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“I don’t know what it means. I only know how fucking much I want you, and that’s not complicated. It’s raw and primal, flesh and blood, me and you. That’s all.”
“What if this place is like the Garden of Eden, and you’re Adam and I’m Eve?”
“I’m not tempted by a damn apple.”
“What if I’m the apple?”
“Adam was warned not to eat the apple. No one, and no book, has told me not to touch you.”
“Maybe you’re supposed to use common sense.”
He cups my face, and his fingers against my skin are somehow gentle and firm at the same time. “Maybe I’m supposed to be the man who’s ready to save you while you save the world.”
This prickles like a brush with a cactus, needling at me with its inference that I’m in trouble, that I’m weak, and that’s why the serpent holds on to me. I’m not weak. “And if I don’t need saving?” I challenge.
“You won’t for long. You’ll be stronger than you ever imagined possible.”
His answer softens me with its assumption of my success, but I don’t see how it’s possible he’s that sure of me, not when he’s kept me at arm’s length until we arrived in Elysium. “Doesn’t that scare you?”
“You don’t scare me, Ember,” he says, and finally it’s the answer I want, even need, and he counters with, “Do I scare you?”
“No,” I say, “but that doesn’t mean I fully trust you.”
“I have nothing to hide from you, Ember.”
“Don’t you?” I challenge.
“No secrets,” he says, “just information I know that you don’t yet, but you will. And me wanting to kiss you again really fucking badly.”
My fingers curl on his chest while heat settles low in my belly. “I’m not sure angels are supposed to talk like that.”
“I’m not an angel, sweetheart, and neither are you.”
No, he’s not, and maybe that’s exactly why when he caresses my hair from my face, his touch is fire, his body against mine is everything. It’s terrifying considering I really don’t know his agenda. I don’t know him at all.
It doesn’t seem to matter, though. I still want his mouth and his hands. I still want his body. “You aren’t kissing me,” I murmur, feeling as if I might combust.
His lips curve, and his breath is warm against my lips, and it radiates through me like sunshine splaying simmering heat from above.
“I’m making sure you know I can resist temptation.
I just don’t want to.” His mouth closes down over mine, and I pant with the intimacy, beyond holding back with Micah.
He saved me, and while he may not be a hero, I feel the life he breathes into me—feel it as surely as the breath that fills my lungs.
I push off the wall and press myself against him, and when his tongue strokes long and deep, I tremble from head to toe. “Micah,” I whisper, and I swear his name on my lips lifts in the wind and echoes in the crash of ocean waves.
He folds me closer, his hands gliding up and down my back, molding me snugly against him, my breasts pressed to his chest, and it’s bittersweet bliss until everything goes to hell.
There’s a charge of energy, and I’m instantly certain we’re not alone. Micah must feel it, too, as he releases me, and as if it’s a part of me, I’ve already drawn my new blade and turned toward the source of the energy. A man is standing right in front of us.