Chapter 8 The Vault
Lilly
We walk back to the stacks together. The spot in my chest tugs.
The vault is at the back. We walk past the rolling shelves. Then past the climate-controlled room where the oldest materials live.
It is a narrow space to begin with. The door swings outward, which reduces the working room. The space is shaped like a corridor. It lies between the vault entrance and the shelf beside it. The feeling is very "afterthought".
I swing the vault door open to do a final check before I seal it.
He steps in behind me with the clan record box. We are both reaching, him for the return shelf, me for the interior light switch. When we both step back we are facing each other. Again my hand goes to my chest.
"Are you okay?"
"What?" I'm collecting papers and lining up boxes.
His hand wraps around mine at the center of my chest.
"What are you doing?"
Slowly he moves it away from my body. The feeling changes. It's warm now.
"I'm talking to you and I took your hand away from your chest."
"It's nothing. I have a twinge or something in my breastbone."
"When did that start?"
"Last week the same day you came to the archive." I look him straight in the eyes. They are dark and intent. He is breathing harder than before.
"Can you feel this too?" I blurt out without thinking.
"Yes, I can." His voice is deeper. His hand squeezes mine.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Yes, I do."
"Are you going to tell me?" I can't look away from his eyes, his face.
"Are you sure you want to know?"
I am not sure but nod as my voice fails me.
"It means you and I are fated mates."
"Fated, like destiny, like in the books in the archives."
"Yes."
The full, absolute stillness I saw the first day, except this time it is not about processing information.
This time it is about restraint. I can see it, he is contained, and underneath the control is the warmth, which I am absolutely close enough to feel, radiating through the narrow air between us.
My body has an opinion about this, a tingly, warm, breathless opinion. I am a twenty-four-year-old professional who has read enough wolf shifter biology to know what the pull means and I am not going to pretend it is something I don't feel.
"Lilly." His voice is low. He says my name, just once, like he is making sure it fits. Then he says, "May I."
Not a question. Not quite. The asking underneath it is real, but he says it with the same steadiness he brings to everything, like whatever I answer, he will receive.
The asking undoes me faster than anything else he could have done.
I reach for him first.
"You may."
His hands find my waist and the sound that comes out of him is low and rough and not quite human and it reverberates in my chest the way the pull does, harmonic, like two things finding the same frequency.
I press my hands flat to his chest and feel his heartbeat. He pulls me closer with a certainty that is not about performance at all.
His breath is hot on the skin of my neck, the shell of my ear. My hands slide up to his shoulders. It's all I can do to hang on.
I follow him walking backwards, he presses me against the wall. We slide down to the only bench in the room. My bottom is between his knees and my thighs are up over his thighs.
My index finger finds its way to the top button of his shirt. It's open. My finger slides down to the next button and I pop it open with the help of my thumb. With one more button, I slip my palm onto his exposed skin.
"Has it ever felt like this before?" His voice is rough, barely more than breath against my ear. "For you. With anyone."
"Not once." My voice doesn't sound like mine.
"Not once?" He asked me again, like he needs to hear it twice to believe it. His eyes glowing and sparkling. The hand on my thigh starts to tighten.
"No. I've never felt this way either."
He groans against my shoulder and lifts me off his lap.
"This is too new and too important to rush. Just a week ago I was thinking about Marris and now… now…"
He draws back and lifts his head. His expression is not stern. It is the controlled ability I recognize from the first day. It is the careful stillness of someone walking a fine line.
"You kissing me." I say. I feel the cool air against the parts of me warmed by him.
"I need to stop." He stands and fastens his buttons with shaky hands. "Not because I want to. I need you to know that."
I wait.
"There's something I should have told you before any of this." He looks at me directly, the way he always does, but there is something effortful in it now. "I'm not ready to say it yet. That's on me, not you. But I won't go further until I have."
He says it like a fact. Like a boundary he is drawing around something he intends to protect.
I don't know what to do with that.
It doesn't feel like rejection. It feels like the opposite of rejection, which is somehow harder to receive, because I don't have a category for it.
"Lilly—"
"I need to get that." The call button at the desk saves me from having to understand it any faster. I put on my best professional register and say "Please drive safely," and I turn on my heel before he can see that my hands aren't steady by a long shot.