Page 78 of Tide of Treason
Lucius watched me turn back toward him, silent, a question tucked into the line of his mouth. My hand found the back of his neck, and I leaned in. The world narrowed to the patch of skin beneath my palm, the ragged edge of his breathing, the space between a heartbeat and disaster.
I pressed my lips to his, soft as a secret. The taste of him had me drunk and dizzy, so I sank my fingers into his hair andtugged, holding him to my lips and losing myself in the slide of them.
The heat of his skin.
The quiet groan that slipped off his tongue onto mine.
Itastedlife.
22 | Kayla
30 years old
Present day
Brown university should’vebeen my salvation, but it turned out to be a brothel with a tuition fee. Everyone had a hustle, and optometry students were no exception. You’d think a classroom full of socially awkward nerds who spent their free time debating the pros and cons of aspheric lenses would be harmless, but you’d be wrong.
First-year? I walked in expecting textbooks and walked out knowing that half the class was fucking each other on the biology lab tables after hours. One girl made an extra fifty grand a year selling used contact lenses to a fetish website. Another ran an underground betting ring on who could dilate the most eyes in a week without the profs catching on. My favorite class was Ocular Pathology, not because of the syllabus,but because the TA slipped me vodka shots under the desk while we dissected cow eyeballs.
By year two, I was performing refractions with one hand while scrolling through crime scene photos with the other. By year three, I was juggling cadaver labs and murder. Eyes by day, executions by night. The irony wasn’t lost on me that while I was helping people see the world clearer, I was actively making it darker.
And by year four?
I dropped out.
My birthday party hadn’t wrapped until three a.m., and it was now ten. I stood dead center of Optica Nova, the most exclusive ophthalmic lab in the country, surrounded by a billion dollars’ worth of technology designed to bring clarity to blurry eyes. Funny. My eyes were fine; my judgment was the only thing that needed an upgrade, specifically the bit that always landed me next to Lucius.
It had taken him all of six minutes to strong-arm me here. Six. That was three minutes longer than I usually lasted around him before logic got tossed out the nearest window and I started inventing emergencies—appendicitis, alien abduction, the sudden urge to join a cult in the Pyrenees. He knocked each excuse aside with that lethal patience he reserved for lieutenants about to get a bullet or, apparently, women with boundary issues. No one won against Lucius. Not even me, and I’d tried.
A box of latex gloves caught his attention, and he studied it with a vague curiosity; thumb running along the edge of thecardboard, a contemplative frown between his brows. He did this often. The quiet fascination with things he hadn’t had the privilege of knowing as a kid. I pretended not to notice, just as I pretended it didn’t make something tight coil in my stomach.
He glanced sideways at a woman at the adjacent desk, snapping gloves over her wrists in a practiced flourish. Lucius mimicked the gesture, plucking a glove from the box. He tested the stretch between long, inked fingers, the latex whispering over his knuckles until it snapped softly into place with a tantalizingpop.
Pulling out the phoropter, I adjusted the dials with one hand while gesturing for him to sit with the other. “Sit. And Lucius, if you lie about the letters—”
He interrupted, voice threaded with mock surprise. “Would I do that?”
“You did do that. You spun that whole eyesight tale just to pry my mouth open.”
“I wouldn’t call it a tale. One word, if memory serves. Good old myopia.”
I dropped the occluder over his left eye with enough force to threaten legal action. Sue me. Lucius looked edible today, relaxed in a black linen shirt that gaped enough to flash a hint of ink, jeans hanging low on his hips, a single silver ring catching the lab’s surgical light as he adjusted his glove.
Dammit, he wasn’t even supposed to be wearing a fucking glove.
I snatched it off.
Once, this had been my sanctuary. Four cream walls, atray of cold steel, and the practiced seduction of silk blouses and red lipstick, all calculated to disarm patients, professors, and the occasional target Papà sent me to study under the guise of a routine eye exam. Five minutes was all it took. An exact measurement of vision clarity, pupil responsiveness, and intraocular pressure.
Lucius flinched when the machine swung close “Is that supposed to happen?”
Yes, if we were testing for glaucoma. Which we weren’t. I clicked the switch to deactivate the gentle puff. Better not to give him an excuse to bolt. To his credit, he settled with a slight grimace.
I nudged his chin.
His breathing deepened subtly when my fingers slipped through his hair, tilting his head back for a better angle. A thick, lush sensation curled around my fingertips, strands impossibly soft against my skin. The knowledge shot down my spine, left me off-kilter. It’d been years since I’d touched a phoropter, but with Lucius, muscle memory all came back in a steady thrum. Except this time . . . my chest forgot how to stay steady.
By the time we got to the twentieth set of letters, I’d stopped making notes. Instead, my thoughts looped in an endless, damning reel of the man who sat beneath my fingers. When the twenty-first set appeared, I realised a different thought had replaced them. Lucius knew exactly what he was doing. Indulging my need for control. Allowing me the illusion that I was still good at something other than the art of inflicting bruises beneath skin and bone. All the while, the curefor the terminal obsession strangling my heart reclined before me, taunting my blood with every lazy sprawl of muscle.
