Page 27 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

He looked over at her, Ana matching the motion, and as close as their faces were, it felt natural.

“I believe you’re real,” Lethe said.

Ana averted her eyes, feeling as though she’d received a strange, deep compliment. It stirred something in her, and she was embarrassed by his blunt kindness when only a moment ago, she’d meant to, well—even she wasn’t completely sure what she’d wanted.

The rain still poured. She still hardly knew what to make of it all.

“Crow said he was going to shoot you if I didn’t get you back in ten minutes,” Ana confessed.

“You’re telling me this a little late,” Lethe replied.

“About five minutes ago, I wanted him to shoot you,” she replied dryly. “We should probably get back.”

Lethe shrugged beside her. “He hasn’t shot me yet.” He fished a stopwatch out from his shirt and clicked it open. “We have plenty of time.”

“That’s a stopwatch,” Ana pointed out before he closed it and slipped it back under his shirt.

“I’ll move when I move,” he replied lazily. “He was bluffing. There is no way he’ll find us here, and if he was serious, then we’ve missed the window already.”

“You’re impossible.” She sighed.

“I can’t believe you were going to let him shoot me.”

“You killed Evira,” Ana replied, confronting him with the fact.

“I let her drink Snake Bite,” he said. “It was painless.”

“It doesn’t justify it.”

“What does?” he asked.

Ana hesitated. She hadn’t been wholly unfamiliar with Evira.

The woman’s reputation—if she was in fact the same En Sanctan woman—had preceded her.

Any justification Ana could come up with, she knew, Evira’s past crimes would match.

The only answer was that killing wasn’t justifiable at all, and to this day, Ana had a hard time answering that question for sure.

She knew what she wanted to say—what she’d wanted to believe, but she’d killed before too for what she’d thought was a just cause. Not as intentionally as Lethe, perhaps, but she’d been aware of the responsibilities of being a soldier.

That seemed intentional enough, and Lethe, in his own right, had acted as a soldier.

The more she thought about it, the more similarities she found between Lethe and herself, and so she stopped thinking altogether.

“You said you think I’m real,” Ana reminded him after a while. “What makes you say that?”

“Faith, I guess,” he muttered after a moment’s pause. Less seriously, he added with the slightest bit of humor, “But I’d say those feelings of yours seemed pretty real. That right arm of yours, by the way. Metal? You lost it on a mission?”

“As a slave. Amiel took it from me,” she said.

“Ah. I see,” he replied and then settled back into silence.

Perplexed by his lighthearted reaction to her rage, she found that some part of her felt relieved and exposed.

A personal nightmare of losing complete control of that ugliness inside her had come to pass, and the most obvious victim of it was sitting right beside her.

Granted, he was guilty in his own right.

Without thinking, she rested her head on his shoulder and released a long breath that barely captured the depth of her sudden exhaustion.

She felt like a wrung cloth in the rain, each second a bit heavier.

She closed her eyes, opening them again when Lethe squeezed her hand.

It was an odd assurance, but welcome, and her fingers traced over his palm and wrapped between his fingers.

Feeling the warmth between their palms felt reassuring, and as his thumb stroked hers, she found herself acquainted with an entirely different feeling.

It was that static again, winding its way over her skin, making her want to curl up as if it were hard to catch her breath. She kept still for a moment longer and then curiously, she released his hand, combing her fingers back through his before trailing her fingertips up toward his arm.

Catching herself in what had initially felt like an innocent exploration of the feeling, she pulled back his sleeve, as if her sole intent had been to see the tattoos.

She hoped he’d believe that. Her eyes focused on the names, which were mostly scarred through.

She’d gotten carried away by the sudden openness between them and was acutely aware of the more open, and apparently more unpredictable, version of herself.

She had told him, very resolutely, that she didn’t like being touched.

On his arm, she saw Ivan Rowe’s name, and continued holding Lethe’s sleeve in her fingers. Her eyes scrolled over the names and then the intricate framing around them. They were detailed, vine-like designs that swept along either side of his forearm, disappearing behind his sleeve.

Feeling that her initial exploration of his arm had been forgotten, she created a question about his tattoos to ensure just that.

However, when her eyes flickered up to his, she forgot her question.

His eyes were waiting with a deep curiosity that assured her his mind lingered on the feeling of her fingertips.

She wasn’t surprised. Lethe, from what she’d gathered, seemed to prefer his sense of touch among all else.

If there was ever a time to let go of him, it was now, but relishing the openness, she didn’t want to.

Not yet. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she’d faced the truth.

Now it felt like it was sitting right beside her, looking her in the eyes and asking her to face yet another question she didn’t want to answer.

Lethe’s other hand found hers, peeling her fingers away from his sleeve. The action was gentle, giving Ana the impression that he would return her hand back to her. Instead, he lifted her hand to his lips and tenderly kissed her wrist.

That startled her. She held her breath, entirely focused on the warmth of his lips as they pressed against her skin.

Thinking that now he’d let go, she waited for him to lean away, but he interlaced his fingers with hers, the sheer mechanics of the gesture urging her closer.

He kissed her wrist again, an action that by all of her understanding of the rules was harmless.

His eyes flickered to hers, measuring her reaction and silently asking for permission, and then he guided her arm past him. She relented, curious as he moved forward, pressing his forehead to hers, his nose grazing hers, but he didn’t kiss her.

Instead, his thumb traced along her jaw, fingers combing back behind her ear, deep through her hair, and guiding her chin back. She allowed her head to tilt, closing her eyes against the rain because this too, by every rule she had, seemed harmless.

His other hand moved around her waist and up the small of her back, and then he kissed her neck, lips pressing against her brand.As if he could drink the rain off her body, his lips ushered the breath out of her lungs, and this, she knew, was not harmless.

She drew a sharp breath, hand flying up to his chest, reflexively curling into the fabric, and they were face to face. His eyes searched hers, and she thought she could feel his heart pounding under his shirt, but maybe it was the illusion of her own.

The swirling, hungry chaos had returned to his eyes, but it was restrained for once—for this. This was hope, a hope she’d released a long time ago, of connecting with another person.

The feeling of his lips on her wrist still lingered; his kiss on her neck still burned. She now realized neither were any less dangerous to her than the man who had delivered them, because each had been an invitation to get lost.

That invitation now swam warm through her blood.

The strength of the compulsion to be close to him scared her.

Her thumb moved across his cheek, feeling his skin.

She’d wanted to let go of her fears for a long time, but right now they seemed to be her only tether to what she still knew about herself.

His other hand captured her face, and he kissed her.

Wrapping her in his arms, he pulled her close to his body, and she buckled as he rolled her onto her back.

She felt everything. He inhaled, and she could feel the movement through his body, and hers, at their closeness.

His hands made her feel alive, a constant pressure moving over her hips and along her ribs as they kissed, her body pushing back against his fingers.

Aware for a fleeting moment that she was headed somewhere quickly, her mind reached for any objection that might reel her back to reality.

She pushed back against Lethe and he released her, sensing the alarm in her force. Panting, she stared, her heart pounding.

“Ares,” she said as he searched her face.

They were already out of time, but she’d gotten so swept into Lethe’s disinterest that she’d forgotten between the two of them that she was supposed to be the rational one.

“We need to get back.” She scrambled away from him, grabbing his arm and yanking him up. Her heart drummed. She searched the mountains. “Come on. Hurry.” She started climbing up the hill.

“I really think we had our priorities right the first time,” Lethe called after her.

“Hurry!” she said, urging him up before slipping through the mud and catching herself. She could feel her heart in her throat, head spinning.

Focus . She pushed herself, not quite sure how she’d gotten from running off to find Lethe less than twenty minutes ago to this. As they crawled up to the path, reality quickly set in.

What was I thinking? She stumbled onto the path, spinning once until she located her Atlas, snatching it up and syncing it back into her belt. “Where is the way back?” she asked as Lethe straightened, looking around as if Ares would pop up somewhere.

“We have to hurry,” she urged him. “Lethe. Where is the way back?”

“Hold on, I’ve got it. Come on,” he prompted, snapping into action and leading her down a path nearby. They hurried through a series of tunnels, stumbling out back onto the original road a few minutes later. Both of them were covered in mud and soaking wet.