“Move.” Ethan reached for the latch. He cranked it, forearms tensing, tendons arching with effort—and his palms skidded off the metal bar. “Fuck!”
She agreed.
Not that she told him.
Massaging the marks on his hand, Ethan scowled at nothing while a new silence simmered between them. Erin paced and checked her phone. Her device couldn’t get reception through the shielding insulation built into the foundation of SVLAC’s experimental halls; it was strong enough to resist the electromagnetic pulses from an atomic explosion. The lab’s valuable and volatile equipment would remain secure in the event of a nuclear disaster, and if some mechanical component in the hutches imploded from an experiment gone wrong, the fallout would also be contained. What chance did her budget cell service have of penetrating?
Fifty minutes became sixty-seven.
Eighty.
“Won’t someone from MEC notify the system engineers that we’re still here?”
“There was a shift change. The fresh crew won’t know.”
He was right.
Again.
“This can’t be happening!” She hammered at the door. But there was no one in the West Experimental Hall to hear her. No one to come, no one to help. There was only Ethan, here in the control room. Obstinate Ethan, who was sabotaging her second meeting with Bannister, just like he’d ruined her night in the Wine Room.
Ethan fucking Meyer.
“You.” She swung around to where he’d retreated to the wall of blank monitors, his hair on end from raking his fingers through it. “You planned this, didn’t you?”
“What? No. How could I?”
“I don’t know!Somehow. You heard those announcements but didn’t say anything, and I’m—”
Late.
She should’ve been out of the experimental halls with a quantum gravity experimental setup confirmed long before the Personnel Protective System test started. But no, Ethan had had to spur her into a fight by ignoring her.
“Now I’m going to be late, and I have plans!” She advanced on him. “I’m supposed to be—”
“Don’t.” He backed away, up against an operator desk. His voice was gravelly. “Don’t touch me.”
“No? Or what? Don’t order me around! My professors learned that the hard way, my brothers know not to interfere unless I call them, and I’d never let you—of all people!—tell me what to do, when I wouldn’t even let Bannister—”
His hooded gaze flashed up. “Bannister?”
She cocked back her arm to prod his vest. “Don’t interrupt me!”
“Bannister.”
He caught the syllables between his teeth—and then Ethan caught her wrist. But he didn’t look at their hands, at the voltaic energy suddenly snapping between them. Instead, he looked at her.Finally: his eyes were nearly black, pupils eclipsing all light and color, yet somehow still glittering with that dangerous mica. And his grip—it wasn’t violent. Didn’t hurt. It shocked her, though:almost gentle. His lips moved, articulating the artist’s name again.
Bannister.
…fuck.
“Forster,” he breathed—
—and then that breath was in Erin’s lungs, and his mouth was on hers.
15
She could’ve screamed.
