Do you feel this too?
"Iris." Low. A warning, or a request. Even he doesn't seem sure which.
"I know," I say. "I'm being an unprofessional rescu-ee. You’ll have to file a complaint."
His hand closes around my wrist and stays there, holding it against his ribs, his thumb finding the exact place where my pulse is making a fool of me. His eyes have gone dark, the flint swallowed up, and the wanting in them is so bare, so unguarded, that it's almost hard to look at.
"Two days," he says.
"I know." It comes out as a whisper, and I don’t mind. I’m surprised I’ve managed to get any words out at all with the sudden lack of air in the room.
"When we get back, I return you to your family. That’s the contract. That’s the job." His jaw is tight. "You'll be home. Safe. Surrounded by people who," a pause, the careful selection of the worst possible word, "suit you."
"Suit me?" I sit back on my heels, my wrist still in his hand, and I look up at this impossible man trying to hand me back like a borrowed coat two sizes too big for him. "You absolute idiot."
He blinks. I'd frame the moment if I could.
"I understand these are extenuating circumstances," I wave the finger of my free hand between us. “And that you’re a fast learner, but don’t you dare tell me who suits me.” My voice cracks and I let it. He should hear what he does.
The air between us crackles.
"I don't know how to do this," he says at last, and it costs him, I can see it. "What you deserve. The kitchen. The noise. The, " his hand tightens fractionally on my wrist, "the entire universe. I've never been inside anything. I don't know how to be."
"Nobody knows how," I say. "You start where you are."
"And where am I?"
"About eight inches too far away."
He moves first. His hand comes up and cradles the back of my head like I'm something that might spill, the same care I gave him in the fever, returned with interest, and he tips my face up and stops, one last breath apart, one last chance for the walls, and I watch him choose this moment. Me.
Then he kisses me, and the house, the island, and the entire kidnapping ordeal excuse themselves from the room.
It starts careful, but it doesn’t stay that way. His mouth is soft in a way nothing else about him is, and then my fingers slide into his hair and something in him comes off its chain. The kiss turns hungry, searching and desperate, a man drinking after twentyyears of telling himself he wasn't thirsty. He pulls me up off my knees and into him, my hands flat on his bare chest, his heart hammering under my palm, and he makes a sound low in his throat that I am going to be hearing for the rest of my natural life.
I kiss him back with everything I've got, which turns out to be considerably more than I knew I had. Fiercer than I've ever been about anything.
We break apart because breathing is unfortunately necessary. His forehead comes down to rest against mine. Both of us are wrecked. I can feel his hands at my waist, holding on hard, actually holding on, like I'm the fixed point now.
"Iris." My name comes out of him in ruins.
"Hmm."
"We need to stop." His thumb moves once against my waist, contradicting him.
"Is that a management decision?" It comes out breathless, which undermines me somewhat. "Because I'd like to appeal."
The corner of his mouth ticks up, and this close, I finally get to see the whole thing, the smile he's been rationing, small and crooked and devastating. "You're shaking," he says quietly. His hand comes up, and he tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear with the same two-finger care he gave the lamp glass. "I won't be able to stop. So you need to take time. You need to be sure."
I have never been more sure of anything. My entire body seems to be vibrating on a different plane of existence to this one. Every cell is switched on and pointing directly to him.
“I’m sure,” I say.
Yakob
"I'm sure," she says, and every operational principle I have lived by for twenty years flies out of the room.
I’ve been sure of things before. Sure of ranges, of timings, of the way a man's shoulders drop a half second before he draws. This is something else. She is kneeling between my knees, and she says it the way she says everything, with her whole weight behind it, and I understand that I am about to do the one thing I have never done on a job.
