The verbal barrage

"What's your plan, Shayn? Run ahead of him really quickly and set a trap he won't see? That seems like it would work. Try to jump him from behind? He definitely won't hear you coming and I'm sure he doesn't have reinforcements waiting nearby he can call out to at a moment's notice. That's if he hasn't reached them already! Are you going to fight the whole world, Shayn?

"Are you going to single-handedly take down the monster that's enslaving the minds of people as easily as glancing at them? Are you so prideful you think you can do more here than The General and his army? Be logical. There is nothing you can do. There is no difference you can make here. Our best pleading resulted, barely, in convincing him to spare our lives for the moment, but that's far beyond what we can expect from a second encounter. Do you want to die?"

The last words were delivered with scathing sarcasm, and Shayn glowered at Simone in all her self-righteous glory.

"Do you??" He moved closer, nearly yelling into her face. "I'm not the one who threw my neck in front of a blade this morning!"

"You're welcome!" She threw her shoulders back and matched his anger. "It's a shame you don't value your life any more now that it's been saved!"

"I could say the same to you twice over!" He was almost nose to nose with her now. Her eyes flashed with anger, and the wind blew her hair back. Flushed cheeks burned with emotion as she withstood the onslaught of his outrage. "Why won't you keep from trying to die??"

"I suppose you can add it to my list of shortcomings," She glared, not backing down from his intimidating posture. "I don't have a copy with me, but I'm sure you keep one."

"And I'm sure you keep a list of mine," Shayn retorted, and her expression softened for the briefest moment.

"Not anymore," She admitted quietly. His heart had been racing from the adrenaline of the fight, and being near death, and then Simone's shocking display, but now it stuttered. Her limpid gaze took the wind out of the sails of his rage. 

He opened his mouth to give her another stinging reply, but suddenly found himself kissing her instead. 

How had his arms come around her? When had he lost all resistance to her beauty? Had he grabbed her, or had she thrust herself at him?

He didn't know, and didn't care.

Shayn was consumed with the feeling of her soft, cool lips against his. As his moved, hers responded in fascinating, mesmerizing, intoxicating ways. One of his hands tangled in the braid at the back of her head, pulling her closer still, trapping her face against his lest she pull away and rob him of her touch. Shayn's other hand pressed at the small of her back, as if to make it impossible for the moment to end.

Her arms were around his neck with seemingly the same goal, clinging to him. All of the tension, the irritation, the flirtation, the sorrow and fear for their lives exploded into a passion that made him lightheaded.

He held on to consciousness, because that's where Simone was. Her kisses were food to his soul, which he hadn't realized was starving until this moment. It was as if the sun had burst through a cloud, blinding his sight and his reason. He was lost, shaken, his life shipwrecked upon the woman in his arms. She filled his senses, devastated his barriers, and lit his spirit on fire. 

He couldn't get enough of her, and he deepened the kiss in his ardor, crushing her against him.

She gasped, and a whisper of caution finally reached his mind. Self control returned, and he began to pull back. Simone quickly capitulated to his retreat, which both relieved and disappointed him. He was not sure he could resist if she wanted to hold on to him, and yet, he perversely wanted her to try. Part of him protested the absence of her lips, urging him to kiss her again. He resisted, but only just.

He opened his eyes to look down at her face, flushed and surprised. Her eyes were round, large, and slightly unfocused.

"I…" He began the statement, but had no follow up. What did one say to a woman after… that?

She swallowed heavily and nodded, looking away. He blinked. What did that mean?

Their breathing was ragged, and the quiet stretched for far longer than was comfortable. Her hands unclasped from behind his neck, and she withdrew them. He reluctantly opened his arms and allowed her to step back, completing the separation he'd begun.

Shayn's arms felt empty without her. He swallowed and rallied his courage. He was shell-shocked, and didn't have a handle on his heart. He'd gone from grief and despair to irritation and fury to passion so quickly it made his head spin. It was disorienting and left him wondering what his problem was. It was horrible of him to have used Simone as an outlet for his tumultuous emotions.

She had been trying to talk him out of an admittedly foolish, emotional decision to try to track down a man who was ready to kill him at their next meeting. Who had almost killed him just now. It was an absurd, ridiculous quest to try to embark on alone. She may well have saved his life a second time simply by talking him out of it.

But the way she did it! It was infuriating, and frustrating, but he probably would not have listened to other options anyway. When Simone fought with him, she commanded all his attention. Her jabs and insults and witty remarks grabbed hold of his mind the way her beauty and kindness and bravery held fast to his heart and soul.

It was hopeless. He was helpless. She had won him, entirely and wholly. There was no way out, no turning back. And yet, his feelings were so volatile, so unpredictable, so extreme… Maybe he couldn't trust his emotions at all right now. He grimaced.

The obscenely unfair situation wracked him with guilt, even as his stomach still gloried in the thrill of the embrace, the headiness of the kisses. He was in far over his head, and had no idea how to tread water, let alone swim.

Every moment that passed was excruciating as he tried to sort his racing thoughts into some kind of coherent structure. He needed to explain, somehow…

"Simone–" He tried again, and she flinched, closing her eyes.

"Please don't," She begged without looking at him. "I'd rather not hear that just now."

"Pardon?" How could she know what she was about to hear when he had no idea what it was he wanted to say? He couldn't begin to describe what was going on inside him, and yet, she already rejected it?

"We can… move on. There are things we need to do. We don't have to talk about it." She tried again. Shayn blinked. Trying to sort out his own thoughts was hard enough, and now he realized that hers were a different matter entirely.

Perhaps a far more complicated one.

"You want to pretend that… all of that… just didn't happen?" He asked incredulously.

"I don't know!" She cried in agony, her eyes snapping open to glare at him.

"Then what do you want??" He splayed his hands. This frustrating, irritating, beautiful, selfless, amazing woman was confounding him to no end!

"I want the truth, but I'm afraid to hear it. So I want to ignore it, in case it's terrible, and so I'd rather move on even though it's going to plague me wondering what you actually wanted to say because maybe it's the opposite of what I think, but I'm usually fairly good at guessing so–" She whirled away from him, hiding her face.

Seeing her distraught state brought some stability back to him. If she needed to panic, he would be solid and steady for her. She'd been the same to him. With a deep breath, he willed his heart to slow and his head to clear.

Her words had tumbled out indiscriminately, and yet, he followed the logic almost perfectly. Or, at least, he thought he did. He just wasn't entirely sure what she wanted the truth to be. Did she want him to declare that he loved her, or was that the opposite of what she wanted?

Shayn's head was fuzzy about the start of the kiss. If he'd grabbed her in a moment of fury, and she'd given in and gotten carried away on the emotion of nearly dying, perhaps she was embarrassed by the display and just wanted it all to go away.

If, by some chance, the magnetic attraction he'd felt had been mutual, was it worth the risk when they were both as liable to berate one another as offer kindness?

He paused for a moment, "So, do you want the truth or don't you?"

"Yes," came the single, muffled syllable.