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The car was deathly silent. She fought the urge to squirm in her seat, casting brief glances at Sylus’s white knuckles on the steering wheel.
The dull ache of bruises pulsed through her body, ears still ringing from the sound of gunfire. She could still feel the press of the gun barrel against her temple, the fear and adrenaline surging through her despite the fact that she had gotten what she wanted. Taking the attention from the innocent bystanders…
She blinked as the car pulled to a stop. Sylus killed the engine with a sharp twist of the keys, his door opening instantly.
“Come inside,” he snapped, not bothering to wait.
She sat in the car for a long second before getting out slowly. She knew the conversation would happen eventually and maybe it was just better to rip the band aid off while the wound was still fresh.
She followed him inside, watching the tight shift of his shoulders as she hurried to catch up to him with his long strides. He led her into his suite and opened a cupboard, pulling out a large first aid box.
“I’m okay, Sylus—”
But before she could finish protesting, he had grabbed her wrist and tugged her over to his desk. He lifted her onto it with one arm, setting the box beside her and opening it to pull out cotton pads and antiseptic.
She hissed as he grabbed her chin and started to clean a scrape on it. His fingers brushed over the bruises on the side of her head and his eyes lit up again with restrained fury.
He moved to her arm, taking her wrist and turning her palm upward to start cleaning the raw skin from where she had caught herself falling on the ground. She could still feel the sensation of Sylus’s Evol around her, pulling her away with quick precision, the man’s screams already dying in a crushed throat.
“Sylus…um…thank you, by the way,” she tried, voice small, tentative.
He paused and finally looked up to meet her eyes, an almost dumbfounded look on his face.
“You’re going to thank me?” he demanded. “For not letting you get yourself killed in a street war?”
Her stomach twisted as the anger practically seeped from his words.
“Sylus, I…”
He cut her off, throwing the gauze to the side and picking up a jar of cream.
“I never want to walk through my city and see you butting into situations so recklessly again,” he snapped. Cream was slathered over her hand before he wrapped gauze around it. Despite the fury in his words his hands were shockingly gentle, careful. “You can protect Linkon, but this is my domain. I won’t let you risk your life here like that over some petty squabble on the streets.”
“There were innocents—”
He slammed the lid of the first aid kit shut and slapped his hand against the desk, causing her to jump. His eyes met hers, dark and clouded with fury. “There is no such thing as ‘innocents’ in the N109 Zone. Especially not if they had gotten you killed by the fact that they dared to be in the vicinity.”
She looked away, unable to meet his eyes for another second. Sylus took a shuddering breath and the sound cut deep into her chest. She glanced up tentatively and watched him fumble with the bandage packaging, hands shaking slightly. That was when she realized that it wasn’t just anger surging through him—Sylus didn’t shake with anger. No, this was genuine fear. Sylus was scared. Her stomach clenched as his Evol ripped the package apart for him, obliterating the bandage in the process. Sylus swore.
“Sylus it’s okay, I can—”
“Nothing about this is okay,” he snapped, hands clenching at his sides. “I found you with a gun to your head. If I hadn’t gotten there in time—if Mephisto didn’t see what was happening—” He exhaled sharply before grabbing her chin, forcing her to look at him. “What exactly do you think I would have done if I had found you with a bullet in your head? I would have leveled this city by midnight without a care for all the supposed ‘innocents’.”
His pointed threat didn’t completely cover the slight tremor in his voice. She finally reached out to him, feeling him freeze as her bandaged hand met his wrist. “Sylus, you know I will always help people in danger. It’s literally my job.”
His jaw ticked. “That’s not your job here among the undeserving scum.”
“Are you also undeserving scum?”
His eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring.
“And what about Luke and Kieran? You think I wouldn’t choose to risk my life to protect any of you?”
His eyes fluttered briefly shut, inhaling through his nose. He was still trembling and she slid her fingers down his wrist to squeeze his hand.
“It’s okay, Sylus. I’m okay.”
Another breath shuddered through his frame and he took her hand, raising it to press against his cheek in a silent apology.
“All I could think of when I saw that bastard scum holding a gun to your head was how… precious you were to me. How I would destroy the universe to avoid losing you.” His voice was rough, earnest now, the anger leeching away and showing more of the fear beneath. It was something raw, bloody, something she hadn’t seen before.
She reached for him instinctively and he closed the distance between them, pulling her in hard against his chest, his breath puffing shakily onto her neck.
“I’m sorry for scaring you,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you—”
“I’m not mad at you,” he insisted, pulling back with an earnest look as he cupped her face, teeth clenched behind his lips. “But I mean it, sweetie, this world has no meaning to me without you in it.”
Her heart fluttered along with something else, something deeper, an inherent connection calling out to him.
Sylus exhaled sharply and surged the last few inches forward to kiss her. It wasn’t quite desperate, but there was an urgency there, a deep need to taste her essence, feel her warmth. To reassure himself that she was here, with him, living, breathing.
She gasped as he broke the kiss, his lips moving along her jaw, lower, to the tender skin of her throat.
“What do I have to do?” he breathed, voice rough with desire and something more vulnerable. “To make sure you come back to me—safe and in one piece?”
“Sylus—” She gasped as he tugged her coat down her shoulders, sliding it carefully off her arms. He kissed her bare shoulder, his hands already moving to the hem of her shirt, hesitating only slightly to check for protest before he continued.
“What do I have to do, sweetie, so you’ll think of me before throwing caution to the wind?”
She raised her arms so he could tug her shirt over her head and looped them around his neck when he had tossed it aside. Sylus ducked in, kissing her more insistently, hands sliding over her bare skin, tracing every bruise and scrape with care.
“Because I’m not asking you to stop being you,” he said between kisses as he slowly sank to a knee to unlace her boots. “All I ask is that when you are in a dangerous situation, you do everything you can to get out of it. Safe.” She shuddered as the word was punctuated by a kiss on the inside of her knee. “To get back to me at the end of it. Safe.”
A kiss pressed to her stomach as he rose and gathered her in his arms, lifting her from the desk.
She clung to him as he carried her into his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. The soft silk sheets met her back as his weight settled over her and his mouth was hot and insistent, causing her heart to pound in her chest, heat blooming inside of her like flowers.
“You are my greatest treasure,” he told her, sincere. He slid his hand into hers interlocking their fingers.
His eyes were soft, no hint of the Aether core showing through. She had never seen him this vulnerable before and it twisted something deep inside of her.
“So think of this, kitten,” he whispered against her skin, never ceasing his roaming kisses as he laid the rest of her bare, fitting the both of them together like two pieces of a fated puzzle. “Think of me before you throw yourself into danger. That’s all I ask.”
~~~~~~~
It was a long time later, far past midnight, that she lay in Sylus’s embrace, fingers threaded through his silver hair. He finally seemed to have relaxed, content with her safe in his arms, his head on her chest in a way he could hear her heartbeat.
A pure and unadulterated affection welled inside her toward this man who was protective in a way that never felt like a cage. Seeing his reaction that night, his fear, had made her realize things she hadn’t really thought about previously. One of which was that Sylus was not invincible. That he did crack. That he could feel fear.
It wasn’t something she liked to see on him, even if it did stir something deep within her. Still, she wanted to do her best not to make him look at her like that again. Not if she could help it.
“I’ll be better about coming home safe,” she whispered as she planted a kiss on his forehead. “But only if you will promise to do the same.”
His breathing didn’t change but his fingers twitched on her side briefly as if in acknowledgement.
She let Sylus’s warmth soothe the aches of the day and allowed herself to drift off, both of them comforted by the other’s presence.