Page 99 of Zenith Tower

I touched the back of his hand.

His fingers flexed beneath mine. He did not move away.

“You’re hurt,” I said.

“I can manage the arm.”

“I wasn’t talking about your arm.”

He lowered his head. Copper light passed beneath my fingertips and traveled into his wrist, following my touch.

I slid my hand up to his shoulder and turned him toward me. He moved slowly, the muscles beneath my palm still rigid. Copper had entered his eyes around the pupils. The color made the gray look almost silver.

“In this room, before they interrupted us, we chose the bond,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Neither have I.”

The answer came without hesitation. His body was less certain. He kept his hands rigidly open at his sides, afraid to trust them on me.

I took one of them and placed it at my waist.

His palm settled against me with painful care.

“You won’t hurt me.”

His mouth tightened, but he left his hand where I had put it.

His grip tightened enough for me to feel each finger through my clothes.

I reached for his face. The tremor in his jaw passed into my palm. He closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, barely enough to see unless I was looking for it.

“You don’t have to force any of it down for me,” I said.

He opened his eyes.

“Once I stop, I may not be able to start again.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

I drew him down and kissed him.

For the first breath, his mouth barely moved against mine. Restraint held in the careful angle of his head, in the hand that remained fixed at my waist, in the distance he kept between our bodies.

Then his breath broke.

His free hand came to the back of my neck. He kissed me again with his mouth open and pulled me against him until I felt the hard rise and fall of his chest. Heat poured through his shirt. Copper light brightened between us, turning the thin linen luminous wherever my body touched his.

I tasted salt at the corner of his mouth. His injured arm shook around me. When I tried to ease my weight away from it, he made a rough sound and held me closer.

“Stay,” he said against my lips.

I kissed him once more, slower. His thumb moved beneath my ear, finding the same place he had touched in the salle at Zenith Hall with his hands tangled in my hair. Nothing about the hand holding me was hidden now.

The unfinished line pulled tight at my wrist.

Hale felt it. He drew back far enough to look down between us. His fingers found mine, fever-warm and unsteady, and folded through them.

“I still choose it,” I said.