Page 39 of Beyond Reason

Again.

“You can use whatever you want, Xavier. You just have to promise that you’ll stay where I can get it for you.”

I’d already promised it once, but I nodded and dropped my head against his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Axel. I’m not going anywhere again, okay? Though…” I opened my mouth and playfully nipped at his shower damp skin. “It would be easier to promise that if I had any idea who was after me. I’ve never seen you be so… hasty.”

Violent. Angry. Lost. He’d been so pale when I’d opened my eyes, splattered in blood and looking like he was trying to carve away the ghost of a memory instead of nearly decapitating a man.

I wondered if it made him feel any better about the guilt that he’d obviously carried for all these years.

“He wasn’t the type to talk.” Axel’s voice was gruff. “Honestly, I think he realized he was going to die either way, so he pushed me into killing him before I tried to get the answers out of him.”

That was probably true. The asshole had been a professional. He’d probably known what was going to happen to him the second he noticed Axel in the alley. There was no way anyone could have seen the man I’d seen and thought that they’d be getting out of the situation alive.

It was one more way he was different from me, different from the world I remembered existing in. I could keep a serene smile on my face while I slowly dismembered a person. Axel could kill a man, but only when there was fire burning through his veins.

Only if he had to.

Too good for me.

The thought danced through my head, and I pushed it aside. It was a good thing I was a selfish man. I didn’t care if he was too good for me, there was no way I was going to give him up.

Not when his arms around me felt like home.

What I’d said to him before was true—he didn’t just kill people. It had to be hard on him, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“I’m sure we can figure out who he was working for if we look at the flash drive a little more. That’s what he was asking for.” I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go through the information again. I didn’t completely understand it, even though I knew I comprehended more than I should have because of the body I occupied. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to be anywhere near a company that could just pluck and place souls wherever they pleased. What if there was something they could do to get rid of me?

What if they wanted their scientist back? The man said his boss wanted to talk to me… which meant he wanted to talk to Marshall.

I had nothing against Marshall Lister. I even felt a little sorry for him, since he was just a different version of me, apparently.

I still would have happily had his entire memory, person, consciousness—his lifetime—banished forever if it meant that I got to stay.

I’d already lost everything once.

Lost him.

The thought echoed around in my head on repeat. I’d lost my life, yes… but there was more to it than that.

There was Axel, and the way he seemed so broken, even though I’d been gone for twenty years.

There was Axel and the sweet warmth on his face as he looked at me like he was seeing the sun for the first time.

There was Axel, who was looking at me now like I was the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

I suddenly didn’t care about people sent to kill or kidnap me, or flash drives. I didn’t care about any of it. I just cared about the sensation welling up in my chest that felt insurmountable, almost inevitable.

I leaned forward and gently pressed my lips to Axel’s throat. It was instant, the way his pulse jumped like it was trying to spill from his skin to write confessions against my tongue. I couldn’t remember much, but I could remember every part of Axel’s body that lit little wildfires beneath his skin when I touched it.

“What are you doing?” he murmured. I was pretty sure he was aiming for protest, but his body seemed to be on a different page. He melted under my touch, his arms going limp and his head tilting back in what seemed to be instinct. It made me smile, made me nip at that thundering jump between my lips just so I could hear a little groan tear from his chest.

Things were different—I was different—but Axel was still the same. And apparently it didn’t matter what body I was in, because he could still feel me.

“Thanking you for saving me,” I answered his question in a saccharine voice, and his hands danced up in response, threading through my hair before gently brushing against my temple.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

---