Chapter 87: Love Crazed 2
MARGAUX
I kept my voice easy. "I did hear parts of your conversation. And she has a point." I didn’t look at him when I said it. "The mate bond is a problem. Against both our better judgment, it keeps pulling us together."
"That is a you issue."
"So Séverine was wrong then." I glanced at him sidelong. "You didn’t try to kiss me."
He didn’t answer.
"I felt you, Étienne."
His pace faltered, just barely, as if my words had caught him off guard.
The corridor was empty around us. No sentinels. No passing Omegas. Just the two of us and the long stretch of stone lit by bracket lights at uneven intervals.
I stopped walking.
He stopped, too, though I didn’t think he meant to.
I reached out with the hand that had not touched the warlock and pressed him gently against the wall. There was no force in it. He could have sidestepped or caught my wrist—he had done both in the last day for far less cause.
He didn’t move.
"What are you doing?" His voice came out low.
I could hear his heartbeat. Even without the bond, it would have been loud at this distance, but through it the sound was thunderous—a rapid, pounding rhythm that betrayed the calm he tried to show.
I looked up at his face. His bare face, the scarred side catching shadow and the unmarked side catching light, and his eyes were wide in a way I hadn’t seen from him today.
"I felt you through the bond," I said. "The heat of your fingers. The way you were looking at me. What you wanted."
"You wish."
I brought my face closer.
His eyes widened. His whole body stilled, tense in that way things do before they shatter. He was ready for it and not ready at all.
I stopped with barely a breath of space between us.
Then I pulled back and looked him straight in the eyes.
"You didn’t push me away," I said. "And what your body does every time I am close to you tells me enough."
The silence that followed was different. It was not the quiet of restraint, but the hush of someone who had run out of safe words.
I stepped back and gave him his space.
"Let’s go look at that camera footage," I said.
His expression did not change. For a second, I thought he was going to do what he always did. Deflect, retreat or perhaps hide behind anger because it was easier than admitting anything real.
Then his hand closed around my wrist. My breath caught and before I could react, he pulled me back.
The movement was fast enough that my shoulder hit the wall with a soft thud.
"Étienne—"
His eyes were however glazed. The other hand caught my waist. He was not rough. But neither was he gentle. It was just enough to keep me exactly where I was.
His eyes burned into mine.
"Étienne." I said again. This time, my voice came out unsteady. "The DNA. If you touch my hand—"
"I do not care."
He was close. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his bare chest, close enough that his breath reached my face in short, uneven pulls that told me his heart was doing the same thing mine was.
His jaw worked. He looked at me like the words were being dragged out of him against his will.
"Do you know," he said, "how hard this is?"
I didn’t speak.
"I should hate you." His voice was rough. Raw in a way I had not heard from him before, not even in his worst moments of fury. "I do hate you. That part is real. I am not going to stand here and tell you otherwise." He exhaled through his nose, sharp and frustrated. "But when you look at me with those fucking pathetic eyes—"
He stopped.
The muscle in his jaw tightened.
"My heart." He said it like it offended him. "It flutters. Like something a child feels. Like something I have no business feeling anymore."
The confession settled between us. I watched his face, the scarred half and the unmarked half both equally unguarded for once, and I understood that whatever had just come out of his mouth had not been planned. He had not intended to say it. ,My actions and the bond had worn him thinner than he’d realized and it had simply slipped through.
He looked at me for one more second.
Then he leaned in.
I felt the warmth of his mouth before it reached mine, that last fraction of distance, the full weight of the moment pressing down on both of us.
I turned my face away.
His lips grazed my cheek instead. A brush of contact that was not what either of us had been moving toward.
He went still.
His forehead dropped to my shoulder.
A long, slow exhale left him there, quiet and heavy, the sound of someone setting down something they’d been carrying too long without admitting the weight.
"This is not right," I said softly.
"You do not need to tell me that."
His voice was muffled against my shoulder. He didn’t lift his head. He just stayed there for a moment, his forehead warm against my skin, and the corridor held the two of us in its empty silence.
I stood very still. My hand, the clean one, hovered at my side. I did not touch him.
I wanted to. That was the honest truth I pressed down hard.
But wanting something did not make it right, and we both knew
He straightened eventually. His face went through a brief, unguarded moment before it locked back into something more composed. He took one step back and then another, putting the distance between us that the situation required.
He looked at the camera mounted above us again.
"Come on," he said. His voice had found its level again, that flat, controlled register he used when he needed to function. "Let us get the head haler to scrape whatever you think you got in your nail and then we can go see what the camera caught."