L
The sound of a dream hitting dirt.
Behind me, Heaton’s footsteps were wrong.
Dragging.
“Get in.”
The words were a dry rattle, like dead leaves skittering across pavement. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the car door as if it were a mountain he didn’t have the strength to climb.
“You’re flickering,” I whispered. “Your eyes . . . ”
“Madeline.” His voice sharpened by force alone. “Get. In.”
I opened my mouth to bite back, to tell him he didn’t get to command me after a night of lies and omissions.
But the words died on my tongue.
He wasn’t being arrogant.
He was hanging on by a thread. I could feel it through the bond: a cold spike of panic that he might lose his grip before he got me to safety.
So, I got in.
The Nova rolled forward unevenly, headlights flickering over the trees in yellow pulses. Heaton kept both hands on the wheel, but I could see the dark shape of the seat through one shoulder. The dashboard lights stuttered with every bend in the road.
The engine sounded wrong.
So did he.
Cal’s voice kept replaying in my skull.
If you were fully charged, she wouldn’t feel a thing.
You’ve tied her to an empty well.
Poltergei.
“Pull over,” I said, my voice shaking.
“No.”
“Heaton—”
“No.”
Something instinctual in me—the cautious part, the careful part, the part that always held back—was shoved aside.
The bond, furious with my restraint, took the wheel.
Literally.
I reached across the seat and covered his hand on the gearshift. His skin felt like dry ice, burning and freezing all at once. Then I yanked the wheel to the right, steering the Nova off the road and into the velvet shadows of the pines.
“What—are you crazy?”
The Nova lurched once.
Twice.
Then the engine died with a mechanical stutter.
“Madeline.” His voice came apart around my name. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What you should have done ten minutes ago.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt.
“Don’t.”
“You’re not going back to the mines because you’re trying to punish yourself.” My fingers shook as I shoved the belt away. “Well, I’m not going to watch you starve because you’re too proud to ask for help. And I’m not going to watch you become a Poltergei.”
“Did he get into my head . . . or yours?” Heaton rasped, his head falling back against the seat. “I know you want to run. You should run.”
“You think I’m going to let you sit here and disappear?”
“I think,” he said carefully, “that what you’re about to offer is a catastrophically bad idea.”
His eyes closed once, as if pain had found a fresh place to live.
“You should hate me right now.”
“I do.”
I turned toward him, my knee dragging across the bench seat.
“I want to scream at you until my lungs give out.”
His mouth twitched. “That’s not helping your argument.”
“Good. I’m not making one.”
I crowded into his space, my thigh pressing against his.
“If the choice is between you using me and you falling apart in this car out of sheer stupidity, I’m picking the option where you exist long enough for me to stay mad at you.”
I felt it through the tether before I saw it in his face.
The fracture. The hunger.
The awful pull of wanting to say yes and hating himself for it.
“You have no idea,” he said, voice dropping lower, rougher, “what you’re putting in front of a starving man.”
“Then stop being polite.”
I reached out, trailing my fingers over the rough denim of his open jacket, tracing the line of his chest beneath. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t even flinch.
His control was a frayed wire, sparking and dangerous.
“I don’t believe you’d hurt me.”
Something dark flashed across his face. “That’s because you have terrible instincts.”
“I think you’d stop.”
“I think I’d try.”
The answer came too fast.
Then, lower:
“But don’t offer me your light and expect me to know when I’ve had enough.”
I let my hand slide higher beneath his jacket, from the cold plane of his chest to the cool side of his neck. My thumb brushed the place where his pulse should have been and wasn’t.
The bond didn’t throb.
It screamed.
“Madeline,” he said. “Trust me. You’re bright enough to hurt.”
I leaned closer until my forehead almost touched his.
“I’m not a toy, Heaton. And I’m not asking for permission.”
With a sound half-groan, half-growl, his restraint crumbled.
His pale fingers shot out, hooking into the back of my jeans. I barely had time to gasp before he dragged me to him. My knees left the seat, my hips sliding over his thighs until I was straddling his lap, chest pressed flush to his.
His other hand was already in my hair; fingers threaded deep at the nape of my neck.
My head tipped back, every inch of me pinned between his control and my own terrible decision to stay.
The cold of him was everywhere.
At my waist. Under my thighs.
Spanning the curve of my hip.
At the base of my skull, where his fingers tightened in my hair.
His body felt like winter made solid beneath me, and still my pulse kicked harder beneath his cloudy eyes.
Heaton looked as if every good intention in him had finally met its limit.
“Understand something,” he said against my skin.
The hand that had hooked into my jeans released its grip only to flatten against my lower back.
“If I do this now, it will not be gentle.”
His mouth hovered near the line of my throat. His hand in my hair flexed just enough to keep my head tipped back for him.
“It won’t be careful,” he said. “It won’t be noble. And if you panic halfway through—”
His hand on my back tightened.
“—I may not be in any shape to stop.”
I should have been terrified. I should have been scrambling back across the seat, fumbling for the door, choosing sanity and air and distance.
Instead, my hands slid around his neck. My fingers sank into the dark mess of his hair, holding him the same way he held me.
“Then listen now,” I whispered. “I’m not panicking.”
A shudder tore through him, hard enough to rock us both. His hands moved lower, gripping my thighs, urging me closer.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re bright.”
I swallowed, my body still bracketed over his.
“Then close your eyes.”