“It has everything to do with you!” she cried, shoving at his chest. Desperate for him to believe her.

“Prove it,” he whispered, eyes glittering as his face lowered toward hers. His mouth whispered along her jaw, his body driving hard against hers, every inch molded to her softening body. “Prove that you don’t feel any of this. Prove that I don’t mean anything to you.” Cupping the curve of her nape, he caught a fistful of her hair and turned her lips to his. “Prove that everything between us is a lie.”

And then his mouth took hers.

She’d thought his advances rough the night before. She was wrong. He’d been deliciously gentle with her in comparison. This…now… His body vibrated with anger, with need, with the desperate urge to claim her.

And she couldn’t deny it.

A strangled noise sounded in her throat as his tongue darted over hers. How could she fight him when she wanted him so much? Her own fist clenched in his hair, trying to hold herself up—hold herself together—under the onslaught of his embrace.

If I let myself, I’ll drown in this…

And then he’d die.

Breaking away with a gasp, Perry shoved at him. If he got hold of her, she knew she wouldn’t have the strength of will to push him away again. A firm hand circled her wrist and Perry couldn’t stop herself from twisting free, swinging his elbow up behind his back—

He ducked beneath her move, twisting the other way and twirling her, almost like a dancer. Timber paneling met her back, Garrett forcing her hands above her head and pinning her there with his body. She’d barely seen him react.

In all of their sparring, he’d never moved like that before. All those times she’d thought she’d won… And he’d let her.

“You bastard.”

He pressed her back against the carriage wall, using his whole body to trap her, to nudge between her thighs and force them to part. Forearms on the wall on either side of her face, he dragged his mouth away, breathing hard. The black glimmer of his eyes burned through her. Good Lord, he was strong. She tried to move, to escape, but she was helpless.

His lashes lowered, lips parting in a soundless groan as he ground against her.

“Come now, my fierce little peregrine,” he whispered, riding against her, the hard ridge of his c**k grinding exactly where she wanted it. “I know you can get out of this…if you want to.”

Perry tried every trick she knew. Wriggling and squirming, and nothing mattered because she could feel him, hands pinning her wrists against the timber, his h*ps rasping against her. Leaving her wet and slick, aching so desperately that she knew only one thing would assuage the emptiness inside…

She stopped fighting with a gasp. Their eyes clashed; he knew it, felt it in her treacherous body. “No,” she moaned, turning her face to the side as he leaned closer.

“There’s no one else for you,” he demanded. Bit the soft skin of her throat. “Say it.”

The sharpness of his teeth shot all the way through her, igniting something deep inside. Perry squirmed, but this time it wasn’t to get away.

“Say it,” he breathed, fingers curling through hers as her wrists lowered, locking their palms together.

Perry closed her eyes. Squeezed them hard against the emotion surging within. “There’s no one else for me.” There never would be. Never had been, from the moment she’d met him.

Thick silence settled between them, broken only by the harshness of their mingled breaths. Perry glanced at him. A fierce, furious exultation curled his mouth into a victorious smile.

It wasn’t done. Not yet. “I can’t stay. This doesn’t mean anything.”

Garrett’s head jerked back and he searched her gaze. “No, it means everything.” He let her slide down his body, wild and trembling, trying to still her own harsh desires.

“Let me say good-bye,” she whispered.

“I won’t let you go,” he told her stubbornly. “I need you.”

“You’ve never needed me—”

“I need you now.”

The train began to slow, rocking from side to side. Perry glanced at the window. “We’re coming into the next station. You should swap trains here.”

Their bodies rocked together, a gentle, torturous sway. Garrett glared at her, still pressing her against the wall. The train’s brakes squealed and an enormous hiss of steam erupted from the smokestack. The train shuddered to a halt at the station, people’s voices ringing down the corridor. And still he pressed against her.

“Garrett—”

“I’m not leaving without you,” he said stubbornly.

“You don’t have a choice.” She made her voice harden.

“Perry, damn it. I can’t—” He looked away, jaw clenching. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can—”

“My CV levels are at sixty-eight percent. And rising.”

The words stole her breath. Of everything he could have said to her, she’d never have expected this.

“No.” That was dangerously high. Almost double what they had been before Lord Falcone had tried to kill him. Worthy of reporting to the authorities. The heat washed out of her.

“Yes.”

No. She didn’t want to believe it. Shook her head.

“Fitz examined me after the attack. I should have died. Falcone had his hand around my bloody heart, I could feel it. Fitz thinks that my body wasn’t strong enough to fight off both the craving virus and the damage that had been done to me, so it chose the greater threat. The craving virus healed me, but managed to colonize me at the same time.” He looked at her bleakly. “Fitz knows, but I haven’t alerted Gibson to how high my CV levels are. He’d have to report me to the authorities as a risk.”

All of the defiance drained out of her. She knew exactly where that route would end. Twice she’d helped to bring back a blue blood lord who’d fled the authorities when he entered the Fade.

“You’re the only one holding me together right now. I can’t lose you. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.” He looked at her, and a part of her cringed at the bleakness in his eyes. “You don’t know how hard it’s been this last month.” Garrett cupped her face between his hands. The pressure of the wall against her back rocked her slowly. She was trapped here, beneath that imploring gaze. “Damn you, please,” he whispered, one thumb stroking her cheek; an almost desperate move. “Tell me what you’re running from. I can help you. And I need you. I need you so much right now. You’re the only one I trust—”

“The others wouldn’t betray you.”

“The only reason I haven’t lost control is because you’re there. At first I was afraid I’d hurt you, but in some irrational way, being with you makes it easier. Makes me feel as though I can breathe through it, keep control.”

She understood only too well what panic felt like.

“You’re my anchor, Perry. You’re my breath when I feel like I can’t catch my own. I don’t think I can be strong enough to fight this alone.” Blackness swept through his irises, stealing away the blue. Garrett clenched his eyes shut, sucking in a sharp breath. “I can’t do this without you,” he told her hoarsely. “I know I can’t.”

“That’s not true.”

But how could she leave him alone right now? This was the greatest fear a blue blood had. To face the start of the Fade, knowing that it would end in either execution or worse.

She’d have walked away to save his life. But how could she leave him behind when he was dying already?

“Don’t,” she murmured. “Don’t you give up.”

Garrett looked at her and she slid her arms around his neck and pressed his face against her shoulder as if to hide that hopelessness from both of them. The racing tick of his heart thundered through his chest, pressed so tightly against hers. Solid and real. Slowly his arms slid around her, as if he wasn’t certain of her response. Or as if he didn’t want to trap her, wanted to give her the choice in this.

Not that there was any choice. Not anymore. Perry slid her gloved hands through his hair, fingers fisting in the dark coppery strands a little too tightly, unable to stop herself from pressing her cheek against his temple to feel his skin against hers.

“Are you staying?” he whispered, the breath of his words stirring against her neck. “You’re not leaving me, are you?”

One last hesitation. An image of the Moncrieff flashed through her mind, sending her heart thundering along like the train beneath them. “I’m not leaving.”

His arms tightened, crushing her against his broad chest.

This is a mistake, something dark in her warned.

But Perry didn’t care. All she could feel in that moment was Garrett’s hard body pressed against hers. For once she could take guilty pleasure in letting herself melt against him.

***

They swapped trains at the next station. This time the trip was silent, the compartment slowly rocking as she stared out the window and watched London growing larger, the train bringing her closer to home. To her fate.

A full yard separated them on the seat. She couldn’t remember a time when Garrett had ever been this silent for so long. He was a man who liked the sound of his own voice, often stirring her out of the long silences she preferred. Teasing her. Tempting her into arguments that went nowhere just to amuse himself, arguments that left her hot and bothered and burning with life.

“Where were you going?” he finally asked.

“The colonies.” It was the only place she could have safely vanished among the populace. Most of Europe was staunchly anti-blue blood except Russia, and that was far too close to Moncrieff for her liking. In the colonies, blue bloods mingled with humans, with little difference between the classes.

He stared at the empty seats opposite them, as if afraid to look at her. “Are you ever going to tell me why?”

This time it was her turn to look away, out through the window. But she could feel his eyes on her, both of them stealing little glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking. Her gaze softened, focusing on his reflected image, rather than the dreary, gray city climes outside. Their eyes met in the reflection.

“I thought not. Devil take you.” A soft sigh. “I suppose I must figure it out myself.”

That made her head jerk up. Garrett could be astoundingly astute—while also incredibly blind—at times. If he started sniffing around her secrets, trying to unearth them…who knew how far he’d get?

“Don’t! I want your word that you won’t try such a thing, or I swear I shall get on the next train out of London, no matter what I promised you.”

Those perceptive eyes searched hers with a thoroughness that felt as though he looked all the way through her. His brows drew together slowly. Thinking. Always when he was at his most dangerous. “I’d find you,” he warned.

“How did you find me?”

“Not your boots,” he replied, his voice sounding tight and dry as he looked out the window. “Do you remember that case with Lord Rommell several years ago?”

A shiver worked over her skin. It was the closest she’d come to dying since Moncrieff.

“I couldn’t find you in the tunnels beneath the theater,” he said, his voice still strangely quiet. “And it stank so bad that I couldn’t track the scent of your clothes either.” He swallowed. “Thought you were dead.”

Almost… Beaten within an inch of her life, lying in the water of the sewers, thinking how easy it would be to just slip underneath them forever. To let the pain and the hurt wash out of her. Even a blue blood could drown.

“You found me,” Perry replied, studying the tension that was growing in his tall frame. Strong emotion wasn’t a good thing for a man in his position to feel. He had to keep calm. Slowly she reached across the seat and slipped her hand into his. “I knew you’d find me.”

“But I nearly didn’t,” he snapped. “I don’t even know what led me down that tunnel. Maybe a noise…maybe some instinct. And there you were, all bloody and bruised. Facedown in that f**king water. Christ.” He scraped a hand over the back of his neck, cheeks reddening. “I asked Fitz to make something so that I’d never lose you again. And then I attached it to the one thing you never go anywhere without.”

Her knife. She felt the hilt of it dig into her breastbone, where it nestled neatly in the sheath built into her corset. Perry’s fingers grazed the smooth velvet over her br**sts and he nodded.

All these years he’d been watching over her. Knowing where she was at all times, what she was doing. It should have felt intrusive, but her heart gave a little twist in her chest. He’d cared. Even when she’d thought her own feelings unrequited.

Perry squeezed his fingers. “Take a deep breath.”

It took long minutes before his breathing returned to normalcy. His fingers tightened on hers once or twice but Perry didn’t draw attention to it. He needed her to be his anchor.

She just wondered whether she’d be strong enough to hold on to both of them when the storm finally hit.

***

The train rattled into London’s Kings Cross station slowly, steam hissing like a kettle as the brakes squealed. Garrett looked down at the warm weight against his shoulder, reaching up to trace a dangling black curl off Perry’s cheek.

She’d fallen asleep roughly an hour ago. The train’s rocking motion had tipped her toward him, and Garrett had eased his arm around her, her head against his chest and the feathers from her bonnet tickling his nose.