Chapter 38 Task #2
Her hand is still on his forearm, holding him in place, and she runs her thumb over the soft skin at his wrist. Her heart is racing, pulse leaping against her throat as she waits for him to say something.
Task
Task wishes he hadn’t needed to come check on the ambassador.
That he could have avoided the medical bay, avoided her, at all costs.
It’s easier to keep himself in line, controlled, when he’s away from her.
Standing in the small vestibule, her hand on him, thumb circling the fluttering pulse in his wrist, has him floundering, searching for words to give to her.
His gut roils as he gazes down at her, his heart aching.
She can’t keep touching him — he needs to put a stop to it.
“You’re hurting me, Kit.” He doesn’t mean it in the physical sense of the word; he’s felt very little pain when they’ve touched since Kit discovered she could neutralize it. She’d slipped a few times, when he’d had her falling apart in his hands, but it was worth it.
“I can’t be hurting you,” she whispers, but she loosens her grip slightly. “I should be neutralizing it.”
“Let go of me.” His voice is a low rumble, commanding.
She takes a deep breath in, eyes hardening with determination, her fingers still wrapped around his wrist. “Not until you talk to me.”
“It’s easier this way,” he says. He isn’t sure how truthful to be about his feelings, whether it’s better to pretend it was only a momentary lapse in judgment, a combination of Pain Draught and adrenaline that drove him into her arms.
Task, major of the Phantom Wing and Hand to the Governor, would lie to her, would focus on his mission, wouldn’t think twice about hurting someone if it meant he would succeed.
But something has changed in him over the last two months, and instead of forcing untruths out of his mouth, he finds himself saying, “I…I haven’t felt this way about anybody in a very long time.
You must believe me when I say that. But we can’t ever be together. Not really.”
She studies him, her green eyes searching his face. “Why not?”
He sighs, throwing his hands up, dislodging her fingers.
“For any number of reasons! It is very likely that I will one day be heir to the Nexarium governorship. I will be expected to marry within the High Council, to guide the planet. You’ll go back to Lumaria once you find a cure, and that will be that.
We’ll be lightyears apart.” He wants to tell her the real reason, the one that will convince her.
That he will ultimately betray her, and that is why she shouldn’t want him, shouldn’t trust him, but he also thinks she won’t take no for an answer.
“You look so happy with Finn, with Knox, with his friends. You deserve something easy, something good. And that is not me.”
“And what if I don’t want something easy?” Kit says, stepping closer to him, angling her head up so she can look him in the eye. He backs up, creating more distance between them. His self-control is already slipping, and if she gets any closer, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to help himself.
“You should want that,” Task says, almost to himself. “I’ll only cause you pain, in the end.”
Kit frowns, her lips twisting into a pout. He wants to bite them. He wants to shove her away. The war within him rages on.
“I want you,” she exclaims, shoving her hands into his chest, her breath coming quickly, heat pouring out of her, as if the fire within her burns too brightly to be contained. He stumbles a step, sheathed surge-saber hitting the door. “You don’t get to decide for me. For us.”
The tether between them snaps then, and he’s an idiot, a total and complete idiot, but he’s kissing her again, cradling her head in his hands, tilting her face up towards him.
Everything feels right when he kisses her, when he has her in his hands.
And she wants him. She lets out a breathy little sound and he deepens their kiss, pushing her mouth open with his tongue as she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him closer until their bodies are flush, pressed together against the door.
His fingers scrabble to unpin her hair, fumbling until the knot at the base of her neck comes loose and it tumbles down around her shoulders.
He moves his mouth from her lips down her jaw, her neck, until she’s gasping.
He tugs her unbound hair, tilting her head back further and sucks hard, certain he’s leaving a mark again and not caring. She is his.
Her hands move over his back, then his chest as he tugs the neck of her shirt aside and places open-mouthed kisses along her collarbone, above the swell of her breast. She arches into him, sighing something between his name and “oh.” He’s lost track of everything that isn’t Kit — her breath, her lips, the arch of her back, the way she gasps as he moves his hand under her shirt, running his fingers over the soft skin of her stomach.
The way he feels nothing but desire coursing through his veins, no pain to be found.
He’s about to pick her up, carry her out of this damn vestibule so they can do this properly, when the door begins to slide open.
They spring apart guiltily, Kit adjusting her top as Nevis enters. She glances between them, and she laughs, a rich, loud sound in the quiet vestibule. They must look a sight. “Really? Here?”
Task doesn’t normally blush, but he feels his face heat, his entire body buzzing with adrenaline. He tries to casually adjust his stance, his half-hard cock pressing against his trousers.
Nevis looks between them, shooting Kit a look that Task can’t interpret.
After what feels like far too many beats of silence, Kit and Nevis holding what might be an entire conversation with only their eyes, Nevis huffs.
“Get a room next time. I don’t want to have to sanitize the whole place every time I come in to work. ”
With that, she walks past them, slipping through the second door into the quarantine ward before Kit or Task can come up with a reply.