I caught his face and lifted up, swallowing the air that separated his mouth from mine. He grunted in surprise, pulling his head back even as the familiar spark ignited somewhere deep in my chest. It was too dark to see his face, but I could tell that he was staring at me in shock. Noah had frozen behind me.
“T-turn,” Cabe stuttered.
I could have rolled my eyes as Noah spun me around to face him. We had been in this situation before, except that the roles had now been reversed. Now they were trying to keep their distance from me. Apparently Cabe thought that I wouldn’t kiss Noah, and while Noah and I certainly hadn’t made the same progress as Cabe and I… I happened to know that Noah was the weaker link. There was a reason he had never stolen the quick kisses that Cabe had.
There would be no stopping Noah once he started.
His eyes were tempestuous: bright and cloudy all at once, swirling with intelligence and tempter. It was always so hard to meet Noah’s eyes when he was feeling any kind of strong emotion, but it was equally as difficult to look away. His mouth was tight in the darkness, halfway to frowning. His attention flicked from one of my eyes to the other before he drew his breath in and allowed his examination to drop to my lips.
“Go ahead,” I goaded him softly. “Get a reaction out of me.”
A warning flashed in his darkening eyes, but he didn’t tear his attention from my mouth. I laid both of my hands against his chest and felt the rumble that vibrated from his throat more than heard it. I curled my fingers into his shirt and drew myself up, wondering if he even realised that his fingers were digging into my hips, helping me to get closer.
“This is going to happen.” I issued the challenge, knowing exactly how to force him to do what I wanted. “So you can either wait around for me to do it or—”
With a growl, he took my lips, cutting off my words. His grip on me tightened, dragging me against his body as he forced my mouth open, the kiss more demanding, more invading, than I had expected or experienced. It made something hot uncurl from my stomach, and a breathless sound of surprise rose from my lips. I held onto his shoulders as he wordlessly commanded more from the kiss, urging me to relinquish everything I had. The light burst within my chest as he groaned, stumbling back a step with me still clutched to him. Cabe caught the back of my shirt, pulling us both upright. I tore my mouth away, feeling dizzy and gasping for breath. I wanted to check that the valcrick hadn’t made an appearance because I didn’t want to take any chances with the collar around my neck. Noah seemed to be in pain, his hands falling away from my hips to clutch at his head. The ball of energy and light in my chest spluttered, forcing my knees to wobble and my arms to shoot out, catching onto Noah. It wasn’t done… and I knew that we were running out of time.
“W-we need to hide,” I gasped, the wretched anguish beginning to build up against the cage of my ribs, splintering out to my limbs.
I wasn’t sure who had heard me or who had dragged me away, but suddenly there was a shelf at my back and a bottle of something smacking into my foot. Noah grabbed my face again just as electricity returned to the building, spilling light underneath the door of the dark little storage closet that we huddled in. I saw the emotion carved into his handsome face before his lips took mine again. He kissed me with all of the pain, confusion, and longing that I had seen in his eyes, and I accepted it willingly, needing the intensity of the emotions that gradually trickled into me to convince myself that this was real.
His grip on me didn’t gentle until the bond was complete, tying us together with invisible cords that pulled taut on our lingering feelings. When he drew back, it was to stare at me with disbelief in his eyes and a word pressed to my lips with one last kiss.
“Mine.”
His stare was too intense, his heartbeat overwhelming inside my chest. There was something dragging between us, some kind of horrible, drugging guilt. I turned from him so that I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore, and I found myself face-to-face with Cabe. Just like with Miro after Silas had formed the bond with me, I felt an overwhelming pull in his direction. He looked down at me gravely, his fingers reaching as I stumbled into him. He lifted me, ignoring whatever pain he must have been in to hug me against his chest. He was trembling, and I knew that he was torn between Jayden’s memory block and the bond that called for him. His arms were crushing me as I wrapped my legs around his waist and tucked my head into his neck. He needed the closeness of my body and wasn’t able to admit to himself why.
“Kiss me,” I whispered against his neck.
He groaned, one of his hands burrowing into my now-tangled hair to pull my head back. “Say that again,” he demanded.
“Kiss me,” I repeated.
His forehead lowered to mine, his eyes closing, a heavy breath escaping. “Why does it feel like I’ve been waiting a lifetime for you to say that?”