by Emily Colin
Her voice trails off into silence. I stare at her, dumbfounded. And then I laugh. “By the Architect, Eva, is that what you think? That I’ve been keeping my distance because I’m holding a grudge? Or because I see you differently after everything that’s happened?”
Her head snaps up, and she glares at me. “What am I supposed to think?”
“I haven’t been touching you out of respect. After what you’ve been through—well, the last thing I want is for you to think the only reason I came after you is because I wanted—” I feel the blood heat my own face, and fight the urge to look away. “It’s a two-way street, apprentice mine. The times I’ve reached out to you, you’ve acted as if my hand was soaked in poison.”
“I don’t scare you? What I did—the men I killed—” Her voice breaks. “I meant to take Efraím’s life. But how I did it... It was like I understood what the Bastarour would do, like I knew they’d see him as the alpha and go after him if they couldn’t get to us. Seeing him ripped apart—it was like the beasts and I worked together to murder him.”
She bites her lip, teeth sinking deep. When she speaks again, it’s a whisper. “All my life, ever since the thief died in Clockverk Square, I’ve been afraid I was nothing more than an animal. I never wanted to be a bellator. And now—”
I look her up and down—her torn clothes, the hair straggling loose from her braid, her dark eyes fixed on mine—and have a sudden flash of insight. “I think you scared yourself, little warrior. Am I right?”
Her mouth opens, no doubt to deliver a scathing retort. And then it closes. “Maybe,” she says.
“Hey.” I step closer, so she has to look up at me, and draw a deep breath to steady myself. That is a mistake, though, because as soon as the scent of her floods my lungs, all I can think about is feeling her against me, knotting my fingers in her hair and finishing what we started in the woods that day. The fear I’ve held so tightly in check ever since I figured out she’d sacrificed herself for me, losing my mother before I’d even met her, my anger at Efraím and the Executor for using Eva, the void that is our future—all of it wells up, shredding my hard-earned control. “What about the ones I killed, apprentice mine? I cut two men’s throats. I stabbed another through the heart, all to get to you. Are you not frightened of me, then?”
“No,” she says, her voice a whisper. “Never.”
“Well,” I say, stepping closer still, “I’m not frightened of you, either, little warrior. And I do want you, more than I ever have. If you let me, I’ll show you just how much.”
A smile curves her lips, the first genuine one since I found her locked in that filthy cell. And then her hand rises to grip my collar, pulling me down to her.
“Please,” is all she says.
42
Eva
My head tilts up and his mouth comes down, sealing over mine. His tongue traces my lips, as soft as I remember. I moan, stepping into him. “Ari—”
“Hmmm?” he murmurs, his breath warm on my neck, then lower. By the time he reaches the torn collar of my shirt, pushing the material apart and skimming the skin beneath with his fingers and then his tongue, I’m trembling all over. Alone in my cell, waiting to see what manner of punishment Efraím and the Executor would devise for me next, I’d dreamed about him touching me like this. It was a secret that had held me together, kept me defiant and strong. But now, with his hands and lips roving over me, the opposite is true—I feel as if I might disintegrate beneath his touch, shattering into a thousand pieces.
I shiver again, and Ari straightens, looking down at me. “Are you cold?”
“No.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Well,” I point out, and glance down at his fingers, vibrating ever so slightly where they rest against the top button of my shirt, “so are you.”
He follows my gaze, and a surprised expression spreads across his face. Then it fades, replaced by the intense, focused look I remember from our first time together, in the woods. With the lightning-quick reflexes I’ve seen him demonstrate a hundred times, he seizes my braid in his fist and tugs my head back, baring my neck. I feel the warmth of his lips, trailing from the edge of my mouth to the hollow at the base of my throat, and then the thinly veiled threat of his teeth. “I’m not shaking now,” he says.
This close, I can smell the lingering smoke of the fence-fire on his clothes, undergirded by blood from the cut on his arm and his own, burnt-sugar scent. His weapons belt digs into my stomach, and the hilt of the dagur presses against my hip, reminding me all too painfully that I’m unarmed.
I almost struggle against his grip, try to put enough space between us to get my hands on his blade. And then, as his lips touch mine, the part of me still capable of rational thought devises an alternate strategy. I remember how he’d made that small, helpless sound the first time I’d kissed him—how the edge of violence had undone his control, so that he’d wrapped his arms around me and driven me back against the tree.
And so I don’t try to get free. Instead I take more of his mouth, sinking my teeth into his lower lip, wresting control of the kiss away from him. Sure enough, he makes the noise again, and this time I recognize it for what it is: the unmistakable sound of surrender. Testing a theory, I brush my fingers against his belt, liberating a small throwing knife and slipping it into the waistband of my pants, at the small of my back. Ari doesn’t notice. His breath comes faster, and his grip on my hair loosens, letting me move. I tilt my head back enough to look up at him; beneath his dazed expression there is the unmistakable stamp of surprise.
“When we do this—” he says, the ghost of a laugh in his voice, “I’m supposed to end up being the one who’s inside you, yeah? So then why can I feel you right here?” He presses my hand against his chest, and just like that night in the woods, his heart pounds under my palm. I try to reclaim my hand, but his fingers knot with mine, holding me still. “I can feel you under my skin, Eva.” His voice is a whisper. “You drive me crazy. That virtueless stunt you pulled—what were you thinking? You could have died.”
“But I didn’t, did I?”
“You could have. By the Architect, why are you so stubborn?” His jaw sets, and his hands close around my upper arms, tightening until the pressure of his fingers is just this side of pain. But his eyes—they tell a different story. They are wide, and the look I see in them is wholly unfamiliar—vulnerability, edged with a dangerous heat. “You never listen. I swear, you make me wish for the days that I could pin you to the wall of your room with my blade and keep you right where I want you.”
His words send a shiver through me, thinking of the day I’d come back from shadowing the guard in the gen lab to find Ari sitting on my bed, flipping his knife between his fingers. What if there is no way left to us but violence? What if all there can be between us is bloodshed and sin? “That’s not really what you want,” I say, lifting my chin in challenge.
He shakes me, just a little. “Don’t tell me what I want. Right now that sounds just about perfect to me, if you want to know the truth.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
One side of his mouth creeps upward in a half-smile, and I hear the hiss as his nails caress the hilt of his dagur. “Wouldn’t I?”
I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry as the barren lava fields they’ve showed us in the vids. “You could try.”
“I could,” he says equably, running his index finger down my face, trailing it down my neck to my collarbone so I quiver beneath his touch. “You want to run from me, Eva? Please do, little warrior. You run, and I’ll chase. And when I catch you—you are mine.”
His voice drops lower with each word, so the last one is nearly a growl. He bends his head, his lips brushing against mine, sending a jolt of electricity through me. “Run, Eva,” he whispers. “I dare you.”
I pull free of his grip, glaring. “I’ll not run from you.”
Ari straightens up. Color burns high on his cheekbones, and he returns the glare. “Of course
you won’t. You’ll just lie to me, is that it, and treat me like a child who needs protecting? You’ll sacrifice yourself to save me, and give yourself over to the Executor like a plaything, and let me believe that you—” He bites off the last syllable, clenching his hands into fists.
“That I what?”
He shakes his head, his pulse beating in his throat, hard and fast as a trip-hammer. And then he reaches out, grabs me by the hips, and yanks me tight against him. His mouth slants over mine again, but this time there is no gentleness in it. He presses harder, demanding I open for him, and when I do, his tongue finds its way inside, tangling with mine.
“Damn you, Eva,” he says, and in his voice I hear the ragged edge of tears. “Damn you for doing this to me.”
I slide my hands underneath his shirt in response, raking my nails over his skin, and he moves against me, rough, so his weapons belt presses into me and his stubble scrapes my face. We are kneeling on the borrowed sleeping mat, and my hands are in his hair and his are on my back, urging me toward him, and we are kissing again, our bodies pressed so tightly together I have a hard time figuring out where he ends and I begin. He is murmuring my name, and I am saying his, and then my mouth is on his neck and his shirt is on the floor and he is fumbling with my buttons, ripping the ruined material free.
“Beautiful,” he says reverentially when what’s left of my shirt falls to the floor of the tent. “So beautiful.”
I give the breath of a laugh. “You can hardly see me.”
“I can see well enough.” His hands find me, cupping, stroking, and I make a sound like a sob.
“Ari, please—”
“I don’t really want to hurt you,” he murmurs, his lips against my hair. “I would never hurt you. It’s just—I was scared, Eva. So scared.” It’s a whispered admission, barely audible even in the silence of the tent. The Bellatorum never admit fear, much less Ari, with all his flash and arrogance. I know what it costs him.
“Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.” His fingers are under my chin, lifting my face. “Swear it on the Architect.”
His scrutiny makes me uncomfortable, and I toss my hair, breaking free. “What? Infiltrate the resistance? Impersonate a Commonwealth loyalist? Pretend to be playing both sides against each other? Throw a smoke grenade into the middle of a room of warriors? I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific, Bellator Westergaard.”
His growl fills the air between us. “You know what I mean. No more of the self-sacrificing games. I’ll have honesty between us, or I’ll have nothing. You choose.”
At his words, a thread of doubt winds through me. I drop my eyes, trying to hide it, but it’s no use; we have been in the interrogation chamber together, Ari and I, and he knows me all too well. “What is it?” he says.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. What are you keeping from me, Eva? Still hiding things, even now?”
“I—”
He rocks back on his heels, hands spread on his thighs. “It’s never enough, is it? What do I have to say to make you trust me? What do I have to do?”
“I do trust you! That’s not it. You’ve got the wrong idea.”
“Oh?” he says in the cold voice he uses to question interrogation subjects. “Enlighten me, then.”
There’s so much I haven’t told him—about who I really am, and who he is to me. But there’s something else, too, a nagging worry that’s been in the back of my mind since the first time he pinned me to the tree in the woods and pressed his lips to my skin.
I don’t know why giving voice to my suspicions is so difficult, in some ways harder than letting the Executor capture me or enduring the ice tank. Maybe it’s because we’re trained for combat and surrender—but no one ever taught us how to deal with situations like this. It takes everything I have to lift my face and meet Ari’s icy gaze. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
His head jerks back. “What do you mean? Who would I have done this with?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “People.”
Ari reaches out and hugs me, holding me close against his chest. His laugh travels through me, moving us both, and he strokes my hair with a deft hand, pulling it loose from my braid. “Well, that’s some small comfort,” he muses. “Here I am, wondering if I’m too forward, if my touch disgusts you, if I’m doing everything wrong and you’re too mortified to tell me so. And here you are, suspecting my superior technique’s the result of seducing a multitude of willing Commonwealth seditionists.”
I squirm, embarrassed. “It was just a thought.”
“And a pleasing one, apprentice mine. Because I do want to please you, more than anything.” His voice drops, roughens. “You’ll tell me what you like then, yeah?”
I have blushed more with Ari in the past two weeks than I have in the preceding seventeen years. “I don’t know what I like.”
“Mmmm.” It’s a purr, rumbling in his throat as his lips brush my neck. “We can figure it out together. If you will?”
“Why, Ari Westergaard. Are you asking me to go to the devil with you?”
He laughs again, a low, amused chuckle. “I hate to break it to you, Eva, but I think that ship has long since sailed. But if you’re offering…”
“See?” I say, pushing at his chest. “That’s it. Right there.”
“That’s what?” he says, refusing to be pushed.
“Why I think you’ve done this before. Saying things like that.”
“Ah, Eva.” The tips of his fingers trace my shoulder blades. “There’s only you. You do something to me—make me feel—”
“You do something to me too,” I whisper, pulling back to look up at his face. His eyes are half-closed, his gaze fixed on me as if I’ve hypnotized him.
“Do I?” His voice is lazy, curling like smoke into the air. “Well, that’s only fair, then.” He reaches out and runs a finger along my lower lip. I touch the tip of my tongue to it, tasting salt, and he shudders. “I was so angry with you for lying to me. But then I see you and all I want to do is kneel down and promise you everything I am, everything I have, if only you’ll stay with me.” He glares at me, his green eyes dark in the faint light. “I can’t stand it. It makes me weak. That’s why I said what I did about pinning you to the wall with my dagur, if you want to know the truth—to feel, even for a few minutes, as if there’s some way—any way—I’m not the one on my knees.”
His words have the unmistakable ring of honesty, but I don’t understand them. What he’s describing—it’s the way I feel about him, not the other way around. “Well,” I say, striving for a tone that mirrors his usual sarcastic detachment, “technically we’re both on our knees, Ari. So maybe you could keep your blade to yourself, until the situation requires otherwise.”
The familiar smile spreads across his face. “We are, aren’t we?” he muses. “Come here, then, apprentice mine.” He lunges, bearing me down toward the sleeping mat. I land on my back with him on top of me, his face an inch away. He brushes my nose with his, a teasing, playful touch, and then his mouth comes down on mine.
The kiss starts out gentle, but when I tug at him, urging, it changes, a clash of lips and tongue and teeth almost frightening in its desperation. Ari kisses me like the taste of my mouth is something he needs to survive, as if he’s afraid he’ll never have a chance to do it again. His urgency is contagious, and I kiss him back the same way, knotting my fingers in his hair and answering his hunger with my own.
These kisses are different, their insistence bordering on savagery—as if we’re trying to climb inside each other, breaking through the barriers of heat and flesh to join the souls that lie beneath. He gasps into my mouth, taking my breath for his own, and I press my lips to his, taking it back. Even though he’s on top of me, though he must have me by about fifty pounds, though he has a weapons belt and I have none, I don’t feel helpless. I can feel him yielding to me, then rising to my touch, just as he’d said. His greater size, his stren
gth—it is an illusion, meaningless between us. I think of him saying, Everything I am, everything I have, if only you’ll stay with me, and hold him tighter.
He nudges my legs apart with his knee and I shift under him, pulling him closer, digging my nails into his shoulders. Reaching between us, I tug the buckles of his weapons belt free and toss the belt beside us, so it lands with a clatter of metal. Then I wrap my legs around his hips and roll him, ending on top. My hair falls down around us, and he inhales sharply, tracing his way down my back to span my hips. The tips of his fingers brush the hilt of the blade at my back, and he freezes, eyes wide.
“What in the nine hells—”
“You should take better care of your weapons, Bellator Westergaard,” I say, my lips curving in a smile.
Ari rolls his eyes. “By the Virtues. I should have known.” His fingers warm against my skin, he pulls the blade free and slides out from under me, covering my body with his. Then his hands are moving on me everywhere, and he is murmuring my name, and our bodies are shadows on the wall of the tent that merge with the swaying branches outside, the noises we make swallowed by the wind. “Ah, Eva,” he whispers, like the word means something else. “Je me rends.”
Deep inside me, I feel a rush of feeling begin to build, the same way it had in the woods. I move against him, seeking, and he moves with me, his body effortlessly following mine. But then he pushes away and rises up on his hands, staring down at me. In the darkness of the tent, his expression is inscrutable.
“This—” he says, sounding breathless. “I—do you want…?”
I struggle to think clearly, but it’s not easy, with the taste of him on my lips and the heat of his body inches away. “Are you asking me...what I think you’re asking?”
Shyly, he nods. “If you’ll have me. Will you?”
I open my mouth to reply and find I can’t say a word. A shiver runs through me anew, half fear, half anticipation, resolving into a fine trembling that shakes me from head to toe. Ari must feel it, because suddenly his weight is gone and he is sitting next to me on the mat, arms wrapped around his knees.
