I bite down gently on his lower lip. His hands slide down my arms, releasing some of the pressure. I take the opportunity to weave my fingers into his hair and then I pull, forcing him to look me in the eyes, just as he has so often asked me to do.

But there will be no asking tonight.

“We’re two of a kind,” I whisper, softening my grip, running my hands under his shirt, digging in my nails as he lifts me up. My hips are pressing into his hips, my feet supported on the shaky bars of the scaffolding as he holds me to him.

“Yes,” he breathes. “And that’s the danger of it.”

I smile, raising one hand to his neck as the other works on his belt. I can feel his erection underneath the fabric, and then I pull the fabric away and feel his length pressing against the inside of my thigh.

Ah, Lander, always ready to lend a hand to poor souls in need of delicious self-destruction.

I grab him by the shoulders as he enters me right here, in this alley, pressed up against the bones of the city as the sounds of the night vibrate through me.

My feet still on the scaffolding, I use my leverage to lift myself up and then press myself down onto him, arching my back, feeling him rubbing against me. He swiftly turns us around and I find myself having to wrap my legs around him in order to keep my balance. In seconds my back is once more pressed against the wall. I’m shaking as I continue to claw and bite. I hear him moaning as he thrusts inside me deeper and deeper.

How can people not see the brutal romance that beats through this city? How can they not see the raw strength and the bitter carnage? How can they not see the cruel history and the passionate victories? The lust, the desire, the anger?

How can they not see us?

But it doesn’t matter. In this moment, in the illuminating darkness, I see him. And he sees me.

He pushes even deeper inside and I call out, knowing that the city will absorb my cries, adding them to its own rhythmic melody. And I feel Lander fill me, feel him explode. I feel . . .

. . . everything.

In a moment I will have to lie to Lander. I will answer to my made-up name. I’ll hide my intentions and my ambitions.

But right now? Right now he’s holding me. Not some pseudonym. Me.

And I’m holding him.

In the city of the blind, we see.

chapter twenty-two

Lander wanted me to go home with him, but I refused.