Page 67 of Examining the Bond

Her arm wraps around my waist, pulling me closer, and I trace the tattoos on her other forearm absentmindedly. Myfingers skate over the contours of her chiseled torso, admiring every bit of her. She’s so fucking gorgeous it hurts.

I can’t imagine how many hours in the gym it took for her to get to this point, but her dedication is admirable.

“You’re very sexy,” I say, tilting my head up to look at her.

One of her eyes pops open—I don’t know when she closed them—and she looks at me. “You think so?”

I nod against her chest. “I could stare at you forever.”

With a chuckle, she rolls onto her side to face me. My fingers move to explore her back, dancing over the dips and curves as I try to memorize each one of them. I want to brand every inch of her on the backs of my eyelids, so when I close them I can picture her perfectly.

I nuzzle into her chest, closing my eyes as I take a deep breath, letting her scent fill me completely.

Fuck, I don’t want to walk away from this.

It feels like I’m racing toward the sun, waiting for the impact where everything blows up in my face. My heart stings at the thought of losing all of this, of losingher, and I know I have to say something.

I can’t miss my chance to tell her how I feel just because I’m afraid. Not when that fear could be the very thing that keeps me from being happy.

My stomach turns with nerves.

“Skylar,” I say gently. We’ve talked about me leaving, but we haven’t talked about what’s going to happen when I’m actually gone. What will happen tous.

We need to work that out before tomorrow, so we’re not scrambling by the time we say goodbye. So we’re not trying to figure things out when we’re a thousand miles apart.

“What is it, preciosa?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

Her hand skirts up my back and over my shoulder, before her strong fingers stroke the space between my brows, like she’strying to smooth out my worry lines. We stare at one another for a long, painful second. Tension works through me, threatening to suffocate me.

This feels so heavy and serious after all the fucking we’ve done this week, and I’ve never been good at articulating how I feel.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask.

Her hand pauses, and her face clouds over as her gaze drifts, completely avoiding mine. My heart sinks, and I feel like I’ve said exactly the thing to kill our cozy mood.

“What is it?” I ask, unable to keep the hurt out of my voice. “Do you not want to be with me?”

She cocks her head to the side. “When did I say that?”

Her response should bring me some kind of comfort, but it doesn’t. Maybe my insides are just too twisted up with anxiety, or maybe I need some other kind of reassurance. Proof that she wants me as badly as I want her.

When she doesn’t answer fast enough, I keep talking to fill the silence.

“It kind of feels like when I leave tomorrow that… we’re breaking up.” Awkward heat swallows me. We haven’t even talked about being a couple and, here I am, talking about breaking up.

My throat is tight, emotions pushing and pulling at me while my eyes remain locked on her.

“We’re not breaking up,” she says softly, her fingers trailing along my jaw. Her eyes still won’t meet mine, lingering on my mouth instead. “You’re just going home. You have classes at the academy, and I have work.”

I squirm in her hold, trying to eliminate the space between us, but I’m already pressed flush against her.

“And then?” I ask, working past the lump of emotion in my throat. “What does that look like? Would it be like along-distance relationship where we video chat and tandem masturbate or something?”

She smirks at the joke and places a kiss on my forehead, her lips lingering against my skin. “You’ll come back to the clinic for more tests, so I’ll get to see you again. I’m sure we could bring you back in the next month, so it won’t be that long.”

My heart drops even further as I realize what she’s really saying: she wants my samples, more tests to further her research, and getting to see me will just be a bonus.

Nausea turns my stomach, but I keep going, the words spilling out before I can stop them.