For the third time, Jinx turned his gun over in his hands.
Aurelia had spent the rest of the morning bent over various lab tables, her nose glued to one computer screen or another. Even though she’d seemed ready to operate on him earlier, when it had come down to it, she’d begged off for a few more hours, saying the diagnostics had revealed new complications for which she needed to prepare.
That had been fine with Jinx. He’d withdrawn, heart heavy, certain he’d need the time to prepare himself for what she was determined to do, but the resignation of it all had set in quickly. The instant he’d recognized what was really going on—that to win her, he had to let her go—he’d given in to it.
And so he’d been left at loose ends.
There were no directives from Spellcaster to see to, none of the chores that made up his daily life with his Three. The inactivity combined with his increasing impatience to have the sever done with had him pacing the narrow space, feeling caged in and uneasy. Too confused now to reach out and touch her, he could only spend so much time watching her before the longing for her skin became too much. He’d needed something to do. Not that there was much he was good for in a place like this.
Eventually, he’d settled into his milieu, a dark, silent laugh choking his chest as he cleaned his weapons and inventoried hers. Death. That was his natural domain. Not intimacy. Not the pounding in his pulse when he looked at her or remembered what she felt like in his arms.
Catching himself staring at her again, he refocused his gaze on the steel in his hands. The gun was plenty clean, the mechanism smooth and the chambers full. His instinct was to holster it, but that was just another thing that wasn’t right. He was still dressed in the scrubs she had given him as he waited for his own clothes to come out of the wash. The flimsy fabric was comfortable enough, but he was itching for sturdier stuff, for belt loops and hidden pockets to lodge weapons into.
If nothing else, he was wearing his boots again. It was good to have that solidity beneath his feet, that feel of a blade against the inside of his calf. It made him feel a little bit more like himself.
In a practiced motion, he clicked the gun’s safety into place. With nowhere to put it, he set it down beside him, but it left an itchy feeling under his skin. He should have a weapon on him, always. Especially now. He had Aurelia to think about. To protect. Even if he might not have her for much longer.
In a moment of weakness, he gave in and let his gaze flit to the other side of the room. The swell of longing rose in his chest. Groaning, he ran his hand through his hair. Aurelia still showed no signs of being ready. And if she didn’t get into his head soon, he was going to go out of it.
It wasn’t just the tight quarters or the dark or the suffocating boredom. It wasn’t even his grim sense of resignation about what she was about to do. It was this limbo. This torture of being close but not quite close enough. He’d spent so much of his life connected to and surrounded by people but unable to say what he wanted to. Never alone but lonely. He was tired of it.
At least with Curse and Charm, he’d known where he stood. He’d known what would happen the next day and the next, and hopeless as it had been, it had been simple. Nothing was simple now.
Nothing except how he felt about Aurelia. Nothing but the way she made him feel about himself.
But she didn’t want that.
He looked up at her again. She had her lip between her teeth as she performed some sort of calculation in her head, gaze trained on a little black screen. Loose fabric hid her curves from him, but he knew them now, knew how they felt against his skin. Would he remember that? After?
They’d both been playing their hands close to their chests since the minute he’d given her permission to do this thing. Cut off from her thoughts, his were riddled with doubt. For all her insistence that she needed to set him free, there was a part of her that wasn’t so sure. Would she miss this? Would she miss him? Those soft moments when just a touch of a hand on skin made everything clear? The harder ones when he was deep inside her and the world gave way, leaving nothing but him and her, minds and bodies melting, one into another?
The deep pang of memory lit a fire inside of him, rekindling the blaze from the low spark that never really went away. He was so keyed in to her, so intensely aware of her body and her heat, even when he tried with all his willpower not to be. It hurt to think that he wouldn’t be. Not for much longer.
Before he fully knew was he was doing, he was on his feet. There’d been no conscious decision to show his mind to her, but in the same instant, she looked up from her work, her face flushed and eyes dilated. All around the guarded edges of her thoughts, there was the same low crackle of need as she set her tablet aside and rose.
“Are you ready?” he asked. He was talking about the procedure, of course. But the deep grit in his voice betrayed that he was talking about so much more.
She nodded, her throat bobbing with the force of her swallow. “We should do it now.”
“Right.”
He crossed the room in a half-dozen strides, and then his hands were on her skin, sneaking their way beneath the hem of her top and circling her waist. All the tension in his mind faded away, replaced just as quickly with a coiling in his abdomen. A rush of blood to his cock.
“I’ll just need—” She stumbled back but didn’t remove herself from his grasp. Not completely. Gesturing absently at the trays of scalpels and wires and solder, she opened her mouth and closed it again.
He wasn’t hearing anything.
“I need.” His lungs burned, his grip tightening and his head floating. There were so many things he needed, but there was one he thought he could have. If only he could ask. He squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. Before opening his mind to show her all the desires simmering just beneath the surface of his skin.
There was a swirl of want and reluctance swimming under hers as well, and she shook her head even as she leaned into him, her hand on his chest, fingers clutching at his wrist. “Jinx—”
“Once more.”
He darted his gaze to the bed he’d held her in the night before, and his resolve strengthened in the same breath that her body went soft and pliant against his.
He didn’t know much about sex or about this twisted mess of feeling scorching his insides to ash. But he knew you were supposed to do things a certain way. You weren’t supposed to take your lover in a frantic pile of limbs and ache on the forest floor or up against a wall. It was supposed to be in a bed. Naked.
And if he only got to do this one more time, he was going to do it right.
It took Aurelia all of three seconds to catch up to Jinx. Any thoughts of surgical severing or of putting distance between them evaporated in the wake of the sheer sexual energy he was putting out, her head spinning at the sudden change in the temperature of the air and of her thoughts. She gave in and gave herself over, clinging to him with as much need as he did her.
And it didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, this pull to join with him. After years devoid of contact or passion, coupling twice in one day should have left her sore and sated, but it had only awoken the hunger. She felt no pain, no lingering satisfaction beyond those blessed moments of release. All she felt was the low throb, brought back to a sharp keening inside her with just a thought.
Maybe that was why she shifted gears so easily. Because the sex had never really stopped. It had only simmered down, and with the lightest of stoking it rose right back to a boil.
In one smooth motion, he lifted her off her feet and into his arms, his mouth crashing down onto hers once more. Tasting his lips and tongue, she wrapped her legs around his waist and held on tight. Each time they’d come together like this, it had been with an urgency that overwhelmed her senses and narrowed the world down to only his skin and touch. But there was more now. In both of them and in their intertwining minds, there was a finality.
A clutching and a cleaving together in preparation for letting go.
Sinking deep into his kiss and into his mind, she was dimly aware of movement and of her back hitting the surface of their mattress, of warm, large hands pushing cotton from her hips. She moved with him, slipping from the barrier of her clothes until she was naked beneath him and then doing the same to him. With every breath and every inch of flesh revealed, she felt like she was freed. Like she was whole. She took one glance down the bare length of his body then opened her legs and closed her eyes, desperate for the peace and pleasure she would find with him inside.
The moment hung, crystalline and vibrating, his heat searing into her through the air between them, the only contact that of his palm against her knee. But then, instead of her flesh parting around the hardness of his body, there was only softness. Lips. Tongue.
Her whole body arched as she snapped her eyes open, moaning long and low at the intimacy of the kiss, of his breath against her sex. His mind was awash in reverence, lost in the subtle taste and texture of her wetness on his tongue. Hers was just as consumed by the unexpected rush of sensation, the gentle probing and the pressure on her clit, fingers pressing her open and sliding inside. There was no fear of what he thought of her, their connection a thread of perfect understanding, and so she melted to his touch. With her body and voice and mind, she told him what felt best, and he pursued her pleasure with an enthusiasm that made her free to reach for it, too.
In the moments before her body yielded, she reached a hand down to slip through his hair, to palm the back of his neck. He groaned against her, and then she was shattering, brilliant waves, soft and echoing. Through it all, he licked and sucked and filled her with his fingers, following the twisting of her body away from him and into him, magnifying every pulse until she was left, raw and limp against the mattress, palm still resting on his skin. Only then did he slide up her frame, but even that he did slowly, mouth trailing over every curve.
With his mouth at her ear, his hard cock pressed between them at her hip, he whispered, simply, “You’re so beautiful.”
She sighed and wrapped her arms around his back, tracing her hands along the lines of muscle to his ass. He palmed her breast, kissed her neck and then her mouth. Over and over, he slid himself along her skin but never took the offer she presented with her parted thighs, the soft openness of her still-singing body.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The images and sensations swirling through his mind were too myriad, and his shaky exhale mirrored that. He pressed his forehead to her shoulder and shook his head. “Can’t decide. Want to touch all of you. Take all of you. Every way.”
Once more. That was what he’d said to her before she’d given in.
She’d been the one insisting they needed to finish the sever. But the idea of losing this, of never having this again…
She pushed the thought away. It was too much. For now, she’d just give him everything she had—she’d take everything she could.
Finding strength in muscles that had gone slack with the force of her climax, she pushed him off her, rolled them and settled herself on top of him. With no more hesitation, without waiting for him to decide, she lifted his cock and straddled his hips. And with one sure stroke, she drove him home.
“Aurelia.” He choked her name and threw his head back, hands coming up to grab her hips as she moved over him. His pleasure flooded her as she soaked him, everything a jumble of wetness and heat, fullness and pressure. He groaned in an unending stream of sound, a symphony against the rush of joined sensation, arms coming around her and hips thrusting up to meet her.
She let him pull her down until their chests were flush, her mouth at his throat. The link between them gaped, the infinite depth of connection yawning at her, and the truth came tumbling out.
“It doesn’t have to end.” The words were a single breath as she sped over him, taking him deeper and faster and feeling the pleasure climbing. “Even after. It won’t end.”
“Won’t…” he panted, gasping hard for every word, hands digging hard into her shoulder and her hip to force her down, “…be…the same.”
“But I’ll still want you.”
His eyes rolled back in his head, a low groan of “Always” and then he was lost, flooding her insides with his release, pushing her until they fell into the same oblivion of thought and sound. A perfect understanding and a union of personhood too profound to bear.
But she bore it. She bore it to the very end. And even then, collapsing over him and breathing him in, she didn’t let go.
She didn’t let go.
“You’re sure about this?”
He only asked her once. She stared into his eyes, wanting so badly to touch his face. To let him touch her at all. But she was already scrubbed in, and the movement of impulses through his new neurons and circuits would only make the work she had to do more daunting. She nodded, keeping all her doubts to herself.
Even though he was supposed to keep his hands clasped in his lap, he reached out, stroking his fingertips along her elbow and looking up at her with pleading in his gaze. “Did you mean it?”
“What?”
“That, after…”
“That I’d still want you?”
He didn’t answer, but the movement of his throat told her everything she needed to know.
Her heart felt like it was swelling in her chest. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips once to his, echoing him as she pulled away. “Always.”
For a second, the room seemed to tilt, the floor dropping out from under her the same way her emotions were. God, what was she doing? A man like this wanted to bond to her, wanted to cement this insatiable need for each other into their tissues and their bones. He was ready to sign everything over to her after only a day. And she was saying no.
She was saying no. Because this man had lost his life. Had killed indiscriminately at his master’s will and had only just begun to find himself again.
She was saying no because they’d only known each other for a day. And because no matter what promises they made to each other, no one ever stayed.
In a slow lurch, the world righted itself. Pausing for a moment, she took a few deep, steadying breaths before looking at him once more. She twisted her mouth into a slow, sad smile and reached for the first needle on her tray.
“Close your eyes.”
His gaze lingered on her face, but then he did as she bade, his hands folded in his lap again, everything about him giving in.
She pushed the serum into his vein. It was a general anesthetic, designed to kill all sensation without putting him under. Designed to keep him safe in the moments when he was alone inside his mind before she severed him for good. The instant she depressed the plunger, his posture eased. There was no pain. Nothing.
The second injection stopped his thoughts from transmitting or receiving anything beyond his own neurosystem. It took a little longer to become evident, but as the drug took effect, she felt it viscerally. The silence was deafening, even the faint hints of his presence in her mind receding.
Had she always been so alone inside her head?
Daunted but still determined, she looked to the monitor on the table, mapping out the connections in his brain she would need to terminate to keep him safe. And to keep herself safe, too. The complexity of the procedure struck her all over again, and her resolve wavered.
She set the laser scalpel down, wanting nothing more than to put her head in her hands and walk away. Only a fool would try this without help. Without a nurse and a sterile operating room. Without someone who knew what she was doing.
Only a fool would do this to someone she loved.
She stepped back, breathing hard. The word was so obvious, and yet it took her by surprise, even as the rightness of it settled into her marrow. She loved him. She loved him.
And she couldn’t do this. Not this way.
The tray clattered as she pushed it across the table and started stripping off her gloves. She’d find another way, a way to keep him safe from his Three without putting his mind at risk. Without separating him from her completely. She’d study harder. She’d find a way.
Jinx’s eyes drifted open, but as they turned to her, they were blank, the depths of them unseeing. His voice was hollow as he asked, “Aurelia?”
“I can’t. I just—I can’t.”
Understanding lit deep within those muted spheres, but the reaction was delayed. Everything was delayed.
And in that second, there was a clattering. And then the sound of footsteps overhead.