last few stairs to reach him and stood at his elbow, looking at his strong profile. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“Really?” He turned to fix me with a scowl. It reminded me of how he used to treat me at the very start—with disdain. I flinched away, but a lot had happened since then, and I was no longer backing down.
“Yes, really. So I went to see Zara! So—”
“I don’t give a shit about that!” His deep voice bounced off the concrete walls. “That’s your decision to make, and you were safe with Dana.”
“Then what the fuck is your problem?” I threw my hands up and let them flop down at my sides.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t see—like you don’t know what I was doing in that room.” His nostrils flared, his posture and expression radiating anger, but I could see something else in his icy eyes too.
“You’re pissed because I saw you doing your job?”
“I’m pissed because you saw what I’m capable of.” We were chest to chest now, breathing hard and glaring.
“I know what you’re capable of. I’m not a fucking idiot. You have a pain ability. You work for a secretive security company that keeps people detained in the basement of their fancy building in Manhattan.”
“Evelyn, I just tortured a man,” he ground out, as if I still wasn’t getting the point.
I sighed in frustration. “Yes, Alec, I’m aware. Do I like it? No, of course not. Torture has been proven to be an ineffective interrogation strategy. According to several studies, ‘rapport-based’ interrogation techniques, such as finding common ground and demonstrating kindness and respect, are generally the most effective. But I mostly don’t like it because I know you hate doing it. But just like you acknowledge that seeing Zara was my choice, I acknowledge that you doing this is your choice and part of your job. I don’t know what the fuck you’re so upset about.”
“I’ve read the fucking torture studies, Evelyn, and it’s rare that we use ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but when it’s necessary, guess who they ask to do it? Now stop pretending that you’re not repulsed by this. That you don’t find me abhorrent for doing it. Everyone else does.”
“I’m not everyone else, asshole!” I yelled, right into his face. I couldn’t help it. But I did manage to lower my volume, if not the level of intensity, for the next part. “I’m Evie. I’m your Vital. I’m completely and irrevocably tethered to you in every conceivable way. I . . .”
The words were at the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say them. Not like this. Not through gritted teeth and growling tension.
He was feeling like shit about himself again, as if he didn’t deserve my understanding and affection. He’d spent his whole life building that wall. My mind got stuck on those three little words I couldn’t say, and what else could I say? Would he even hear me anyway?
So I decided to show him.
I closed the distance, wrapping my arms around his neck and attacking his lips with mine. He grunted and circled his arms around my middle, pushing his tongue into my mouth. He didn’t drive me away with his body as he had with his words. Instead he drew me closer, pouring all his rage and frustration and desperate need into that one frantic kiss. I took it all and gave it right back, our hands pawing at each other, his threading into my hair, mine pulling on his shirt.
The sound of a door slamming echoed through the stairwell, and we broke the kiss but still clutched each other. I held his icy stare as the sound of voices and several footsteps reached us from below. It sounded as if we were right in their path.
I groaned in disappointment. No one could get me going as fast as Alec. More and more often when we got into each other’s faces, neither of us willing to let our stubbornness go and concede, it would end in frenzied, passionate sex. I couldn’t seem to get enough. It was as if I’d psychologically primed myself to associate our bickering and arguing with sex, like some fucked-up version of Pavlov’s dog. Pavlov’s cock?
It couldn’t have been healthy, but that didn’t change the fact that I was so ready to go that my abdominal and vaginal muscles were clenching and relaxing in anticipation. How the hell was I supposed to face people in this state?