“I trust you,” Anton said, reaching to touch his face. “I always trust you.”

He drew Jude toward him, but Jude stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“You keep doing this,” he said, breath hitching. “Every time we get close to talking about—whatever it is you don’t want to talk about—you look at me like that and kiss me and I—I just let you do it. It’s not fair and it’s not—It’s cruel, Anton.”

He knew Jude was right. He felt sick. It was something Illya would have done. It was something Anton had done, back when his only thought was survival. Allowing people to have what they wanted from him, what he thought they wanted, so they wouldn’t ask for something he couldn’t give.

But that was before Jude. Before he understood how hands and lips and touch could transform you. How you could want more and more of something and have it never be enough. How for a few short moments you could be the center of someone’s whole world, and how powerful that was. How dangerous.

Jude curled his fingers in Anton’s shirt. “Don’t shut me out. Please.”

This was what he’d been trying to avoid since leaving the Wandering City. Jude’s earnest face, his careful touch, his wide-open heart. This was the warning Hector had tried to give him.

Anton brushed a thumb along the ridge of Jude’s cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then tell me,” Jude pleaded. “Whatever it is. You have to tell me, Anton.”

Anton swallowed down the panic and fear rising in his throat. “It’s nothing, Jude. It’s—”

Anything, he thought desperately. You can have anything you want. Just not that.

He looked into Jude’s eyes. “You have to just trust me.”

Jude drew back an inch, squaring his shoulders like he was preparing for a blow.

And then he was pulling Anton in, his lips crashing against Anton’s in a kiss that swelled between them like a storm. Anton held on to him like he was drowning, tasting his desperation, his fear, taking it all and pouring it back into him.

Jude broke away, breathing hard, his gaze crackling like a tempest.

Anton swayed back, putting a few scant inches of space between them. Having all of Jude’s considerable focus on him was always overwhelming, whether he was arguing with Anton or kissing him breathless. It brought Anton back to that first day in the harbor of Pallas Athos, feeling the echo of Jude’s Grace reflected against his own—leaving Anton trapped, exposed, unbalanced. The intensity of his gaze had once made Anton almost lose a game of cards. It could make him do a lot of things.