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The admission stripped away what remained of my defences.
“So am I.”
She drew back enough to look at me. I touched her cheek.
“I know how to protect you from men with guns. I know how to hide you behind steel and move you through a city without leaving a trail.” My thumb passed beneath her lower lip. “I’m ready and willing to kill anyone who tries to hurt you.”
Her breathing changed beneath my touch.
“But I don't know how to be what you’re asking me to be.”
“I’m not asking you to be anything.”
I looked at her face and saw the fear she had brought into the room. She had come to me because dawn might take the choice from us.
“The thought of losing you has become the most frightening thing in my life,” I admitted.
Adriana’s lips parted.
I had faced men with knives pressed against my throat and entered buildings knowing people waited inside to kill me. I had pulled bodies from cars and watched blood leave men faster than my hands could stop it. Yet none of it had required the courage those words cost me.
Adriana lifted her mouth to mine. This kiss was slow. There was no desperate collision or panic driving her hands. She kissed me with the unbearable patience of a woman who had heard the worst truth about me and chosen to stay.
My hand moved into her hair. I kissed her until her body softened against mine and her breathing deepened. Until control became a thin, failing thing stretched between the man I had sworn to be and the one she made me want to become.
I backed her toward the wall without breaking the kiss. My hand closed around her waist while the other braced beside her head. Her fingers moved into my hair, and a small pull dragged the last of my restraint to the surface.
I stopped with my mouth against hers.
“Adriana.”
Her eyes opened slowly.
I forced myself to hold her gaze.
“You need to understand what you’re choosing.”
“I chose when I came to your door.”
Her palm settled over my heart again.
“And because I wanted one night where you stopped acting as though wanting me would be the end of the world.”
I lowered my forehead to hers.
Death might still be waiting inside one of the containers we intended to enter tomorrow. But Adriana stood in my arms, asking me for something I had denied myself longer than I had worn the collar. Not absolution or sacrifice.
Life.
I caught the edge of her cardigan and slowly pushed it from her shoulder.
39
ADRIANA
There was nothing holy about the way Demi looked at me. Nothing priestly about the hand gripping my thigh or the quiet, deliberate confidence with which he held me exactly where he wanted me.
My fingers tightened in his hair.
