Chapter 20
AN ARCTIC WIND WHIPS DEZ’S hair. She screams, but the sound disappears in darkness. Her arms swirl, seeking purchase, as dots of pale white light zing past her.
Seconds feel like centuries. Her feet pedal. Her stomach lodges in her throat. She looks below her, but there is nothing—so much horrifying nothing—as she tumbles faster, faster, down.
She’s always falling in her dreams. It’s her deepest fear. She wishes she was one of those people who got to fly in their dreams. Instead, she’s here, inside this waking nightmare, and it feels like she’ll be falling until the end of time.
Hopelessness swallows her. She thinks of her family. Will she see them again? Will she ever not be here, falling?
She closes her eyes and gets a sudden flash of memory: Asher.
The day they met. A vision of him on his skateboard, levitating.
Dez has tried not to think about Asher since she got to Acheron, because she’ll probably never see him again.
Because her mind is full enough with other things she wishes she hadn’t ruined. Why is she thinking of him now?
Because it seemed, even when Asher was descending on the half pipe, like he knew how to fly.
Dez can’t fly. All she can do is—
Suddenly, something catches her. Someone. Strong arms cradle Dez in a warm, protective grip. She sees nothing in the darkness, but her downward velocity slows.
The arms fold Dez into a tucked position, cradling her head.
“Hold on!” Rafe shouts, and then—
THUD.
They strike a hard metal surface with a force that reverberates through Dez’s bones. Rafe rolls into the impact, still cradling Dez in his arms. Finally they come to a stop. She gasps for air. Her right shoulder and the right side of her face throb from the impact.
She turns to face him, catching her breath, near enough to one of the dots of light to finally see the face, so close to hers it’s almost touching.
“Rafe,” she breathes.
“Are you okay?”
“Where are we?” She can feel his heart hammering in his chest. Both their breaths come quickly, mingling in the frosty air. She puts her hand against his cheek, making sure this moment’s real. His skin is warm, a little stubbly. Her thumb a millimeter from his mouth.
Slowly Dez’s eyes adjust to the cavernous space around them. The room’s as long and wide as the Vault, but it’s infinitely deeper, crammed with towering electronic servers, high as skyscrapers, stretching farther than Dez can see, humming dully, all emitting flashing flecks of light.
Dez looks down and sees that she and Rafe sit atop one of these server towers, the floor beneath them far away.
“What is this place?”
“This is our data storage center.” Rafe glances around them. “It’s part of the Vault.”
“Aren’t these places usually off-site?”
He looks at her. “Not when what you’re storing is too sensitive to entrust to a third party.”
“How did we get here?” she asks.
“I’m not sure,” Rafe says. “This is the most secure zone on campus. It has seven layers of defense. Yet somehow you managed to stumble in.”
“I was only—”
“It must have something to do with your Lens. Maybe its weight weakened a place in the floor, and you fell through the crack—”
“A crack? And you dove in after me?”
“What do you expect?” He eyes her boldly, comprehensively. “You’re my protégé.”
Heat spirals through Dez’s core. Rafe reaches out and gently brushes a cut on the side of her face. It burns.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, “before we both get hurt.”
He points at a server next to them. It rises fifty feet above their heads.
“Can you climb?” he says.
“You’re joking,” Dez says, looking around for other options.
The only other servers near them lead down.
Far down. A direction she’s not interested in going ever again.
She inches away from the edge, swept by a sudden wave of vertigo.
“Can’t you call someone, explain what happened? We didn’t do this on purpose—”
“You got yourself into this, Rae. Get yourself out.”
“I can’t climb that thing—”
“Then you’d better hold on,” Rafe says, and flexes.
“Give me a fucking break.”
“I did Everest in less than a day. This is cake.”
“When are you going to stop bragging—”
“When you put your thighs where your mouth is.”
“I don’t think you understand how to use ‘where your mouth is.’ Like, at all.”
“Hop on.” He slaps the back of his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
He turns his back to Dez and bends his knees. She can’t believe she’s going to do this, but she really doesn’t like this place. She sighs and flings her arms around his neck.
“Wrap your legs around me.”
When Dez follows his instructions, she’s amazed by how fluently their bodies fit together.
She breathes him in, feels the warmth of his neck against her cheek. His strong hand under her thighs.
He reaches above them, grabs a metal edge, and begins making his way up.
For several, quiet minutes, Dez observes him moving slowly, sturdily upward, taking hold of gaps and toggles, and drawing his body upward, never breaking or disturbing the equipment.
His traps flex and ripple, and he breathes steadily, audibly, in a way Dez can’t help finding erotic.
Is this what he would sound like in bed?
She holds fast to him, but finds her panicked grip relaxing, her body somehow trusting that he’ll get them out of here.
She stops worrying if Rafe can feel the heat from her essence radiating into his lower back. She decides she wants him to feel it, to know her desire. Slowly, she lets her hands descend across his torso, feeling his muscles, wanting to feel more.
After climbing for what feels like an hour, a surface overhead glows blue and gray.
“Is that—”
“The underside of your Lens,” Rafe says when her chest is level to it. “Hoist yourself up like you’re climbing out of a pool.”
Dez pulls herself onto the platform, highly aware of her ass.
Once she is safely up, she collapses on the flat, familiar surface, her breath coming in gasps.
She can see now that what she just climbed through is a large crack in the starry black border of her Lens’s platform.
From above, it’s barely discernable to the naked eye, but wide enough for her to have fallen through.
Rafe drops onto the platform next to her and rolls onto his side. “You okay?”
“I’m not sure,” she admits. “That was very fucked up.”
He cracks a smile. “Wanna do it again?”
Dez gets to her feet. She touches the screen, now dim gray and missing her brother. She tries to replay her mistake, tries to understand how it happened.
“Why didn’t you warn me that could happen?” she asks.
“I didn’t know I’d need to. You have a rare gift for unprecedented catastrophe. I’ll have Zeke take a look at it, fix the crack.”
“How did you catch me? I was falling so fast.”
“At some point, you’re going to have to accept that I’m a stud.”
Dez thinks back to the moment just before she fell. The clip of her dad. Mo’s scream. She’d been trying—senselessly—to protect an on-screen version of her brother from fifteen years ago. Was that her mistake? That she forgot she was making a film?
“It felt so real, what I was watching.”
“I know.”
“And down there, it felt so infinite,” she says.
“I know,” Rafe says again.
She remembers Zarlengo’s warning from the first day of class: Sometimes Visionaries are seduced by their own visions and fall into self-absorbed rabbit holes. He said sometimes these filmmakers could become irretrievable.
It sounded absurd, until now.
“The good news is,” Rafe says, stepping closer to her, so close she can feel his chest against her back. “You never have to go back. Unless you like making the same mistake twice.”
His breath tickles her ear, sending a rush through her. Speaking of mistakes …
His fucking mouth.
She moans when it grazes her skin, the feeling a pure and joyous rush that washes over the fear of the past hour. It’s enough to make a girl forget she almost just died. She rolls her neck to give Rafe access to the sensitive place at her nape.
Right. There.
He drags his lips across her skin. He kisses her neck, making slow circles with his lips.
She reaches to unbutton her shirt, to lower it to her shoulders so that his mouth can reach more of her, her upper back, her shoulder blades.
He breathes in, breathes out, exploring her body, somehow always keeping his mouth where she needs it.
His breath alone is just about enough to make her come.
“Rafe,” she says, her voice husky and low.
“You destroy me every time you say my name.”
“Rafe.”
The destruction is mutual. She spins around and wraps her arms around his neck. She falls onto his mouth with hers.
There should be a different word than kissing to describe what happens next.
It’s not like anything Dez has ever felt or done before.
Even hotter than the first time she’d kissed Rafe.
Because what they’re both saying with their mouths, with their hands, is that they can’t resist the searing force between them.
They might hate each other, might piss each other off multiple times a day, but there’s a hunger between them that won’t be denied.
When sexual attraction is this palpable, everything feels like fucking, and nothing is close enough.
Dez absolutely needs him, his firm body, his huge hands, the way he smells, and his irresistible mouth.
They could go at this all night, all year, a lifetime, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever get enough.
She runs her nails lightly up and down his chest. His hands find her ass and squeeze like he’s claiming it as his.
Anyone from Acheron could be walking by her Lens.
Could they sense the hot shit going on in here?
Dez doesn’t care. Can’t stop. In fact, she hopes they can.
The thought of someone watching her fuck Rafe right here turns her on exponentially.
She imagines herself going down on him while a whole host of last-years watch her, and before she knows it, Dez is dropping to her knees.
She puts her hand on the hot, hard bulge of him through his pants.
“Dez,” he groans. “Wait.”
Jesus Christ, not again.
Rafe takes her hands and pulls them away from his body, guides her back up to standing. He steps backward, opening up a cold distance between them.
“We can’t,” he says, out of breath.
“We really can,” she says, trying to sound casual, feeling like a violin string about to snap.
“No. Listen to me. I’m serious.”
She sighs. “Are you seeing someone else?”
“No,” he says quickly.
“Then what? Your religion forbids it?”
“You have,” he says, his eyes the most potent blue they’ve ever been, “no idea how hard this is for me.”
Dez is running out of patience. It’s the second time he’s mind-fucked her, which means he’s past due on owing her an orgasm.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” she says.
She tries to leave but he takes her hand, which is annoying and also feels so good. His skin on hers. She closes her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“You could explain.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Seriously?” Dez laughs. “I’m not going to fall in love with you. I don’t even like you. I just want you. Like I’ve never wanted anyone before.”
“That’s precisely how I feel about you.”
“You don’t like me either?”
“I want you,” he says in a low and sexy growl. “Like I’ve never wanted anyone before.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There are … things about me you don’t know.”
“That sounds like a bunch of bullshit.”
“But it’s true.”
“Okay, well, I’m a good listener, especially during foreplay.” She doesn’t get why he’s making everything so serious.
“I’m sorry,” he says with new finality. Then he pushes past her, retracts her Lens, and rushes out like she’s contagious.