He finally sensed her terror. He set down his typewriter case and leather bag and broke into a run to meet her.
Iris had lost count in her mind. Over the hammering of her pulse and the roar of her adrenaline, she realized the siren had gone silent. The temptation to look at the sky was nearly overwhelming, but she resisted. She kept her eyes on Roman as the distance began to wane between them, and she pushed herself to run faster, faster, until it felt like her bones might melt from the exertion.
“Kitt!” she tried to shout, but her voice was nothing more than a wisp.
Kitt, get down! she thought, but of course he didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know the cause of the siren, and he continued to run to her.
In the moment before they collided, Iris clearly saw his face, as if time had frozen. The fear that lit his eyes, the confused furrow in his expression, the way his lips parted to either heave air or say her name. His hands reached for her as she reached for him, and the stillness broke when they touched, as if they had cracked the world.
She took hold of his jumpsuit and used all of her momentum to push him to the ground. He wasn’t expecting it and she easily unbalanced him. The impact was jarring; Iris bit her tongue as they tangled together in the long grass, his body warm and firm beneath hers. His hands splayed against her back, holding her to him.
“Winnow?” he gasped, his face only a fraction of a centimeter away from hers. He was staring at her as if she had just fallen from the clouds and attacked him. “Winnow, what is hap—?”
“Don’t move, Kitt!” she whispered, her chest pumping like a bellows against his. “Don’t speak, don’t move.”
For once in his life, he listened to her without arguing. He froze against her, and she closed her eyes and fought to quiet her breaths, waiting.
It didn’t take long for the temperature to drop, for the wind to die. Shadows spilled over her and Roman as the eithrals circled high overhead, their wings blocking the sun. Iris knew the moment Roman saw them; she felt the tension coil in his body, felt his sharp inhale as if terror had pierced his chest.
Please … please don’t move, Kitt.
She kept her eyes clenched shut, tasting blood in her mouth. Tendrils of hair dangled against her face, and she suddenly had the fierce urge to scratch her nose, to wipe the perspiration that began to drip from her jaw. The adrenaline that had fueled her across the field was ebbing, leaving behind a tremor in her bones. She wondered if Roman could feel it, how she was quaking against him, and when his hand pressed harder into her back, she knew he could.
Wings flapped steadily above them. Shadows and cold air continued to trickle over their bodies. A chorus of screeches split the clouds, reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard.
Iris chose to focus on the musty scent of the grass around her, broken from their fall. The way Roman breathed as a counterpoint to her—when his chest rose, hers was collapsing, as if they were sharing the same breath, passing it back and forth. How his warmth seeped into her, greater than the sun.
She could smell his cologne. Spice and evergreen. It ushered her back in time to moments they had spent together in the lift and in the office. And now her body was draped across his and she couldn’t deny how good it felt, as if the two of them fit together. A flicker of desire warmed her blood, but the sparks swiftly dimmed when she thought of Carver.
Carver.
The guilt nearly crushed her. She kept him at the forefront of her mind until a shiver spun through her, and she felt a strange prompting to open her eyes.
She dared to do so, only to discover Roman was intently studying her face. Her hair lay tangled across his mouth, and her sweat was dripping onto his neck, and yet he didn’t move, just as she had ordered. He stared at her and she stared back, and they waited for the end to come.
It felt as if spring had blossomed into midsummer by the time the eithrals retreated. The shadows fled, the air warmed, the light brightened, the wind returned, and the grass sighed against Iris’s shoulders and legs. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear shouting as life slowly returned to Avalon Bluff. It took her a few more moments to quell her fear, to be confident enough to move again, to trust that the threat was gone.
She winced as she pushed upward, her wrists and shoulders numb from holding herself frozen. A slight groan escaped her as she sat back on Roman’s waist, her hands tingling with pins and needles. The pain was good; it reminded her of how furious she was at him, for arriving unannounced in the middle of a siren. How his utter foolishness had nearly killed them both.
Iris glared down at him. He was still watching her attentively, as if waiting for her to lift the command over him, and a smirk played across his lips.
“What the hell are you doing here, Kitt?” she demanded, shoving his chest. “Have you lost your mind?”
She felt his hands slide down her back, resting on the curve of her hips. If she wasn’t so exhausted and stiff from the harrowing encounter they had miraculously survived, she would have knocked away his touch. She would have slapped him. She might have kissed him.
He only smiled as if he had read her mind, and said, “It’s good to see you again too, Winnow.”
{26}
Outshine
What was she supposed to do with him?
Iris had no idea, but her stomach was in knots as she pushed away from Roman’s lithe body, standing with a wobble. She crossed her arms and watched as he rose with a slight groan. It felt like she had swallowed sunlight—there was a warm humming in her body that intensified the longer she regarded Roman—and she realized that she was actually pleased to see him. But her pride remained in place like a shield; she would never let him know such a thing.
“Do I need to ask you again, Kitt?” she asked.
He took his time brushing stray grass and dirt from his jumpsuit before he glanced up at her. “Perhaps. Profanity is quite becoming on you.”
She gritted her teeth but managed to hold back another curse, cracking her neck instead. “Do you have any idea how much danger we were in? Because you decided to walk across a field during a siren?”
That sobered him and he gazed at her. A cloud passed over the sun. Shadows fell again, and Iris flinched, as if an eithral’s wings were the cause.
“Those were eithrals, weren’t they?” Roman’s voice was thick.
Iris nodded. “You’re familiar with the old myths?”
“A few. I slept through most of my mythology classes.”
She had a hard time imagining that. Roman Competitive Kitt, who wanted to be the best at everything.
“I take it the siren warns of their approach?” he asked.
“Yes, among other things,” she answered.