CHAPTER 36 - Sylas
The crash of the metal stool against the concrete floor echoed through the limestone vault like a gunshot, but I was completely past the point of measuring the noise.
I had my fingers locked deep into her tangled curls, my thumbs pressing hard into the fragile curve of her cheekbones, forcing her face up until her ragged breath was the only thing filling the narrow space between us.
The disciplined silence I had wrapped around myself for a decade had dissolved into absolute nothingness, replaced by a raw, unmanaged desperation that made my hands shake against her skin.
Did you kiss me? After I passed out?
Her whisper hit me like a physical blow, the frantic thrum of her heart vibrating against the palms of my hands where they gripped her jaw.
The distance I had spent six days constructing had collapsed.
She was staring up at me, her dark pupils wide, and the anger I had defended myself against for days was gone, replaced by a wide, defenseless clarity that stripped every remaining defense from my ribs.
I had betrayed my own composure. I had confessed everything.
“I kissed you because I was desperate,” I whispered, the admission tearing raw from my throat as I leaned closer, letting the heat of my breath brush against her lips.
“I was watching you bleed, and I couldn't stop myself.
I needed to know you were still there. I needed to feel you.
If that makes me a monster in your eyes, then fine, but don't you dare tell me I didn't want you.”
The silence that settled over the workbench was suffocating, broken only by the overlapping, frantic cadence of our breathing.
Her fingers had moved to my forearms, her grip tight, anchoring herself to the fabric of my sweater as if the floor beneath the substation were about to drop away.
She wasn't drawing back. She wasn't throwing her cold, formal barriers into the air anymore.
I stared down at her parted lips, the memory of the cold, dark river tunnels clashing violently with the sudden, radiant heat of her presence under my hands.
The pretense was over. The boundaries we had tortured ourselves with for four days hadn't kept us safe; they had simply compressed everything until it was ready to burst.
My fingers softened, moving deeper into her hair, tilting her head back until the distance between our mouths was almost non-existent. I wasn't a man trying to manage a situation anymore. I was a man standing in the ruins of his own reserve, waiting for the rest of the world to fall away.