Page 161 of Immune

“Really awful observation skills, thank you.”

His mouth almost moves. “You told me to sit, so I sat.”

“Yeah, but then you got up,” I point out with a very obvious frown on my face.

He shrugs. “You moved.”

I turn my head slowly, my eyes boring into him. “That’s not a reason for you to move around when you’re already hurt.”

“It is to me.”

I hate that. I hate the warmth that floods through me, inescapable and real. I hate the way my body reacts to his voice before my brain can bat the feeling away or lock it in a box, label it “absolutely not” and throw away the key so I can’t be tempted to peek inside.

I look back at the compound and say, “We need to talk about what happened in the rain.”

Kaito freezes. Not visibly to anyone who doesn’t know him, but I know enough now that I pinpoint the exact moment he stills, which is honestly a terrible development for me.

“What about it?” he asks carefully.

“You know what,” I answer, and silence follows, the quiet stretching out between us.

I can hear the sound of Zeds in the distance, their groans reaching me here, thin and utterly aimless. Wind rattles the chain-link fence and behind us, the office remains quiet.

Really, I should leave. I don’t. Instead, I say, “I don’t know what that was.”

Kaito’s voice is low as he tells me, “A kiss.”

I feel my cheeks heat instantly, so I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the enlightenment. I’m pretty sure I managed to piece together the general mechanics of it on my own.”

“So what did you mean?”

I look at him, and that turns out to be a mistake. His eyes are dark and steady, and they don’t hold a single ounce of teasing. There’s no smugness, no Alpha satisfaction, or anything that tells me he thinks he’s won something because I just so happened to put my hands on him first. And honestly? That just makes it harder. Because I know what to do with arrogance. I have the knives to deal with arrogance.

“I mean,” I say slowly, “I don’t know if it was fear, or heat, or biology. Or if it was because you keep following me around like a very intense shadow with stubbornness issues.”

His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second, and my body notices. Which doesn’t surprise me, because she’s a traitorous little bitch. Then he looks back at me and asks, “Does it only have to be one of those options?”

My hands tighten painfully around the fence. “Yeah.”

“No.”

“Kaito,” I grit, but he interrupts me before I can argue.

“Fear can make you want something true, right? Heat can make that wanting as loud as a siren. Biology can tell your body to wake up and pay attention,” he says, voice calm and measured, even as his scent deepens under the blood. “But none of that dictates what you choose. It doesn’t decide it for you.”

My throat suddenly feels too tight, and I hate it. I hate the way he says things so naturally, so plainly, as if he’s setting down weapons in places where I can see them clearly.

“So, if I wanted it because of my body?” I ask.

“Then your body wanted it,” he answers simply.

“And if I wanted it because of you?” The words slip out of my mouth and I make no move to roll them back up, shove them in my mouth, and choke on them.

Kaito’s jaw tightens, and there it is. The crack in all of the restraint he seems to possess.

“Then I’d want to know what you choose to do with that,” he eventually offers.

My pulse hiccups.