"Hold still," Vale said, thumb hooked under my jaw, "or I nick an artery instead of a chip."
"You're not cutting anything out of me." My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was the only win left in that stalled box between floors six and seven.
"Didn't say I was." His other hand dragged the collar of my coat off my shoulder, and the seam gave a little, threads popping at the shoulder like the coat had decided whose side it was on. "Just want to see it. The first one. Rhys likes his marks pretty and hidden. Bet it's right here."
His knuckle grazed the curve where my neck met my collarbone, and I felt that graze everywhere it had no business going — down my spine, low in my stomach, a full-body yes my mouth had never agreed to.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what. Don't touch you, or don't tell you what your own pulse is doing." He leaned in, and his smell got into my head before his hands did — cedar and metal and something under that, something warm, until I couldn't tell where my own breath ended and his started. "It's up, Gia. Since I said mine on that floor. Not since he stamped you leftover."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"It means everything." His mouth was an inch from my ear, and I hated that I tipped my head to give him more room instead of less, like my neck had a vote and hadn't checked with me first. "It means your body already picked. Your mouth's just running two minutes behind."
I put both hands flat on his chest to shove him back, and my palms betrayed me too — stayed a beat longer than a shove needed, felt the heat coming off him through his shirt, felt his heart going faster than a man who talked this calm had any right to.
"Rhys can pull David's enrollment," I said, because it was the only weapon I had left and I needed it between us like a wall. "One call. My brother's out of the academy by morning if I don't walk back onto that floor and beg for the reject to be reconsidered."
"He won't get the chance." Vale's hand slid from my jaw to my throat, not choking, just resting there, feeling every word I said vibrate under his palm. "I already own David's tuition contract. Signed it an hour before the rite. Rhys can freeze the enrollment. He can't touch the money."
I went still. Actually still, not performance-still. "You did what?"
"Bought your leverage before you knew you'd need it." He said it like it was nothing, like it hadn't just rearranged the whole board I thought I was playing on. "Now the only person who can pull your brother out of that academy is standing in this elevator with his hand on your neck."
"That's not protection. That's a leash with better lighting."
"Call it whatever helps you sleep." His thumb moved, tracing the line of my pulse like he was reading a page only he could see. "But you're not stamping me leftover in six months. I'll make sure of it."
The elevator groaned, dropped an inch, steadied. The emergency light buzzed overhead, and for a second the whole car went dim enough that there was nothing left to look at — just his hand, just his breath, just the sound of my own blood loud in my ears like the world had shut off every sense but touch.
"Vale." I meant it as a warning. It came out wrecked instead.
"Say it again like that." His forehead dropped to mine, and God help me, I let it. "Say my name like you didn't mean to."
"I hate this," I whispered, and it was true, and it was also not the point, because my hands had stopped pushing and started gripping the front of his shirt, fistfuls of fabric, pulling him the half-inch closer my mouth would never admit to wanting.
He made a sound low in his throat — not a laugh, not quite a groan — and his hand left my throat to drag through my hair, tilting my head back, exposing the same stretch of skin he'd been hunting since the doors sealed.
"This is where he stamped you leftover," he said against my jaw, lips barely touching skin, and it wasn't a question. "This is where I'm going to make him watch me put a different word there."
"You're not marking me in a service elevator." But my chin was tipped back further, offering, my breath already shallow and fast, my body writing a check my mouth had no intention of signing.
His teeth grazed skin — not breaking it, just enough to jolt my whole body like I'd grabbed a live wire — and his other hand found the small of my back, flattening me against him until there was no air left between us to argue in.
"Not tonight," he said. "Tonight I just want you to feel it. What your own skin's been begging for since you walked onto that floor in a stamped-shut collar."
I shoved him then, hard, both hands, and he let me, stepping back a full foot, watching me with an expression that had far too much satisfaction in it for a man who'd just been pushed off.
"You felt that," he said. Not smug. Certain.
"I felt you being an ass."
"You felt your pulse jump under my mouth, and you leaned into it before you caught yourself." He reached past me and slammed the emergency release, and the car lurched, grinding upward instead of stuck, metal groaning like it hurt. "We're not going back to the floor. We're going down. There's a vault on the sublevel nobody logs into after midnight. You're going to sit across from me and tell me your mouth still says no."
"And if it does?"
"Then I'll believe you." The doors juddered open on a corridor lit the color of old blood, and the smell of steel and dust rolled in, sharp enough to almost clear my head. Almost. "Right after your body finishes explaining why it doesn't."
He took my wrist — not gentle this time, not asking — and I felt where his fingers landed, felt the exact shape they'd leave behind by morning, a bruise shaped like a decision I hadn't made yet.
"Vale, wait—"
He didn't. He pulled me out of the elevator before I'd decided whether I was following him or being dragged, and the doors sealed shut behind us with a sound like a verdict.