That didn’t change Giana’s stance. She’d talked about
punishment, but she hadn’t moved after prowling so close that
their souls could have tangled. “You’re reading too much into
it. It was a keep your enemies close situation.”
“So keep me close!” Coralyn wanted to give Giana that
final push, send her reeling towards her. She didn’t know how
to make it any clearer. She was here. She was choosing this.
She might not understand why or all that entailed, but she
wasn’t leaving. “Or was all that talk in your office just empty
threats and words the wind could blow away?”
That was it. Whatever was holding both of them back
severed, or maybe it was just that whatever had thrown them
together surged up in a force so strong that there was no
resisting it.
The distance between them evaporated and their mouths
met hungrily. Coralyn was swept away by the force of it. She
kissed the vitality back into Giana and breathed in her breath.
She took her hurt and expelled hers back. She realized, as she
laid her heart bare in that desperate kiss, that she trusted Giana
for some inexplicable reason. She wanted her, she wanted to
heal, she wanted to forget, she wanted her to remember what
they’d shared. She wanted to run, and she wanted to stay. She
wanted to find out what it was she’d felt before, and she didn’t
want it back, because if she sipped from that deep well of
contentment again, she might want it forever, and Giana
wasn’t about forever. Coralyn wasn’t about forever either.
But they had this moment.
“Giana, please,” Coralyn panted.
That earned her a hand around her throat. A collar of
Giana’s fingers. She didn’t squeeze. Just kept it there in a