Page 262 of Immune

That almost-laugh comes back again, caught behind that bandana of hers, then she reaches up to pull it away. Her mouth appears. Her chin. Her face, completely unhidden and close enough to actually ruin me.

“I don’t want quiet,” she says.

My hands tighten once on her hips before I force them to relax. “What do you want?”

“The music.” Her fingers grip my shirt tightly. “Your voice. Your hands. I want to know where I am.”

I nod.

“Then stay with me, Tiny Terror,” I say. “That’s all. No disappearing. No pretending you’re somewhere else to survive me. If you need to stop, we stop. If you need to slow down, we slow down. If you need to bite me instead, I’ll do my best not to be dramatic about it.”

Her gaze flicks to my neck, then back to my eyes. Something old and Omega-hot flashes through the air as she says, “Bite.”

My heart actively slams against my ribcage once, and I go very, very still.

Her fingers tighten once more, and she says, “Not yet. I just… I want to talk about it before my brain turns into soup.”

“Good plan,” I tell her softly. “Loving the soup awareness.”

“Ewan.”

I breathe out slowly before finally saying, “A claiming isn’t a joke, love.”

“I know.”

“It’ll bond us.”

“I know that, too.”

“I need to hear you say you want that,” I tell her. “Not because Davis scared you. Not because your body is looking for somewhere to hide. And not because I’m here and convenient.”

She scoffs while her eyes narrow. “You think you’re convenient?”

“I’m right here, I smell good, and you’ve already pinched my headphones,” I answer. “I can see how the lines have blurred.”

“I want you,” she says bluntly, ignoring my attempt to joke, and the words land like a live grenade. She doesn’t dress them up, doesn’t lower her gaze. “I want your stupid headphones and your stupid jokes and the way you somehow manage to make rooms feel less riddled with barbed wire. I want your scent. I want your hands. I want the bond because it’s you, and because when everything around me gets too loud, you don’t tell me to be quiet. You make the noise actually make sense.”

I actually can’t talk. There’s not a single joke left in my brain. I think she just broke me.

Then something flickers behind her eyes, something that looks very much like guilt. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.

“What?” I ask.

Her fingers twist in my shirt. “Xeon.”

It’s not a question, but more of a warning maybe? A door she’s leaving open so I can walk my merry ass right out of it if I decide to be an idiot.

I’m not an idiot.

I press my forehead to hers and softly tell her, “Yeah. I know.”

Her breath catches. “You know?”

“Love, the man walked out of that greenhouse looking like he’s finally met God and was politely told to keep it down,” I explain.

Dakota stares at me. Then, against all the odds in the broken world, her lips twitch. “He did not.”

“He absolutely did,” I argue. “He was very quiet about it, because he’s Xeon, but still. Man looked like he’d been emotionally rearranged.”