He’s just watching me, so close, so still. He’s waiting for me to bridge the gap, to cross the chasm that lies between us. Gravity tilts again, nudging us closer, and I let the force fling me across the abyss between us. My hand trembles as I slide it behind his neck, close my eyes, and press my lips to his.
For a heartbeat it’s like kissing stone. He is immovable, a statue of pure resistance. I’m hit with a flare of horror – I was wrong; he doesn’t want me. The shock grips me like a fist, until he melts suddenly, his arms snaking around my waist.
His lips part with a low sound of yearning and desire, crushing against mine as he kisses me back, hard. He tastes like salt and sweat. His scent curls through my senses, reducing my circling, frantic thoughts down to a background hum.
This is right.
The touch, the taste, the very smell of him folds into a space in my heart that is his perfect size and shape. His chest against mine. His fingers pressed to the small of my back. The way my shoulders fit neatly inside the circle of his arms.
I break off the kiss to drag in a breath, and he brings one hand to my face. ‘Cat –’ he starts, but I don’t want to talk. We don’t need words right now. All I want are his lips on mine and his hands on my skin. I grab his shirt and pull him to me, forcing his lips open with mine.
He yields for a moment, stunned, then lets out a growl in the back of his throat. He pushes me with his hips, guiding me to the bed, and we tumble on to it together, my fists bunched in his shirt.
‘I want you,’ I whisper, tugging at the fabric. His shirt comes off in a blur, showering us with a cloud of sparkling nanites. The scars on his chest gleam, and I shove him on to his back, bringing my lips to each cruel line slashed into his skin.
A moan rises from his throat. He pulls me up to kiss him again, his hands sliding underneath my tank top.
‘You’re so beautiful, Cat.’ He drops on to the pillow, staring up at me. ‘You have no idea how beautiful you are.’
I close my eyes, arching my back, hooking my fingers under the hem of my top to pull it off just as a knock sounds on the door.
I freeze.
Cole is up in a blur, shirtless and flushed, sending me tumbling on to the bed. He has a gun in his hand and has angled himself between me and the door before I can even scramble to sit up.
A second knock sounds, and then a flap at the bottom of the door swings open, and a paper-wrapped package slides through a metal slot. Footsteps echo down the hallway, disappearing slowly, and Cole sets his gun down on the desk and picks up the package.
He turns it over in his hands, then rips the paper open and scans the contents briefly before handing it to me. ‘It’s for you.’
‘For me?’ I take the package. A white cotton bathrobe and slippers fall into my lap, along with a silver slip of fabric that feels like water when I touch it. A handwritten note is clipped to the back.
Wear this for the procedure. Change in the bathroom unless you want us watching. – Novak
My head snaps up, my eyes searching the corners of the ceiling. ‘Cole, are there cameras in here?’
He shifts uncomfortably. ‘Uh, yeah.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I was about to take my shirt off!’
He scratches his neck. ‘Well, I was a little distracted by the fact that you were … you know, taking your shirt off.’
I just stare at him. I want to be angry, but there’s a flush on his cheeks, and dead nanites in his hair, and I’ve never seen anyone look so beautiful.
‘Jesus, Cole.’ I stand up from the bed, clutching the fabric and the bathrobe, my skin still tingling in the places he kissed me. A second ago this felt so right, but now all I feel is a lurch of confusion. I don’t know why I’m here or what I’m getting us into.
I’m about to die, and he’s about to lose me. Coming to his room was a mistake. I shouldn’t have let my weakness get the better of me.
‘I should go.’
‘Cat, wait.’ He takes my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you about the cameras. I was going to, I swear.’
I shake my head. ‘It’s not that. It’s the procedure, my father, everything. I can’t think straight right now. I shouldn’t have come here. This was a mistake.’
‘It didn’t feel like one to me.’ He steps closer, bringing his hand to my face.
My eyes drop to the sketchbook on the floor. ‘Really? Then why were you looking at your drawings of Jun Bei when I came in?’
‘I wasn’t.’ He bends down and picks up the sketchbook. ‘I wasn’t looking at her, at least.’
He flips open the book to a page near the end, where a girl’s face with bright, sharp eyes stares back at me. Her mouth is tilted slightly, her jawline curved up elegantly into a mass of long, swirling dark hair. She looks beautiful and strong. But this face doesn’t belong to Jun Bei. This is a sketch of me during the broadcast. Every curve and plane of my features has been drawn so perfectly, so carefully, that it takes my breath away.
I tear my gaze from the drawing and up to Cole. Something trembles inside me at the look on his face.
It’s pure vulnerability. Pure, unrestrained emotion breaking through from a man built and forged to be a weapon. The look sends a jolt through me. A rising voice, an answer. A feeling so powerful it makes my hands shake.
He’s right. This is real. I can feel it between us like a shift in time and space, a distortion of the very laws of nature. There’s no turning back from this. We’ve already gone too far. I promised Leoben that I wouldn’t hurt Cole, but now he’s opened up his heart just in time to see me die.
I’ve lied to him. I’m still lying. He’s going to hate me for it.
There’s nothing so dangerous as an Agatta’s best intentions.
‘Cole,’ I breathe, my voice breaking. I want to leave, to run, to wind back the clock and give us more time together. Instead, all I can do is step into his arms and let him pull me tight against his chest.
This time when he kisses me, it’s not with the fire that was driving us before. It’s soft and gentle, the kind of kiss that makes the world shrink down. We hold each other, and somewhere in the sound of his heartbeat, I find myself circling a tentative kind of peace.
If this is how I get to spend the last afternoon of my life, then maybe everything is OK.
Maybe I’m ready to die, after all.
CHAPTER 34
Night is falling by the time a guard knocks on Cole’s door, telling us the Skies are ready to run the decryption. We’re led outside and into a black-windowed car to take us to Sunnyvale’s research laboratory, where Dax and Novak are waiting. Cole sits beside me in the back of the car as we roll across town, with one hand on his knee, the other in my lap, his fingers laced through mine.
‘You look beautiful,’ he says. ‘I like this outfit a lot.’