All Things Wicked by Karina Cooper

take much.
    Juliet looked back again, dragging her free hand through her sweat-damp hair and out of her face. The fire left untended behind them shone like a beacon, practically a comet in the vast emptiness. If they were true to old habits, the witches wouldn’t risk the light if they were anywhere even close to the roads that led up to the city proper.
    They were deep, then. Deep enough that they could light fires and set up shop, sloppy though it was.
    The light dogged their footsteps until Caleb jerked to a halt, seized her arm, and yanked her into a side alley. She stumbled over chunks of loose rubble and found her back pressed against cold cement, her palms splayed over hard, denim-clad muscle. It was a thin barrier. The heat of his body worked its way through his stolen jacket, and for a shuddering moment, she couldn’t think of anything but how cold her hands and feet were. How cold her extremities had been since she’d woken up in a grimy basement.
    How cold all of her had been for too many long, empty months.
    His body was warm and hard and strong against hers, and as she opened her mouth, he slid one hand over it, murmuring a wordless warning.
    Her breath caught in her chest. She couldn’t see anything but the faintest impression of his silhouette, his angled jaw tilted to the side as he studied something, listened for something somewhere out in the black and barren ruin.
    His elbows hemmed in her shoulders, caging her between them. His long legs braced hers, his chest rose and fell against her own in slow, rhythmic breaths that only pushed a slow, rhythmic—oh, God, an all too familiar burn to the juncture of her thighs.
    She swallowed, opening her mouth again to complain. To protest. Her lips rasped against his callused palm and he froze.
    She forgot how to breathe as Caleb turned his head. Forgot how to think as his breath warmed over her cheek. She didn’t have to hear it to know his breathing hitched; she felt it in the startled catch of his chest against hers. Felt it in the sudden slam of his heart.
    Echoed in her own.
    Her lips moved again. Shuddering, her lower lip brushed his palm on words she couldn’t form, and the hand splayed against the wall beside her head shifted. Slowly, so lightly that she wasn’t sure if she imagined it, the side of his fingers skimmed the curve of her cheek. Ghosted over her jaw.
    His gaze gleamed in the faint light, chips of diamond. Unreachable. Unreadable.
    Had she ever seen them warm?
    Once , breathed a traitorous sigh deep in her body. Once, they’d caught fire. Just for her.
    She shoved at his chest with a low, raw sound. He let her go, released her as easily as if she hadn’t just shivered under his touch. His weight shifted, drew away even as he lowered his head to whisper, “The guard came back. Keep the flashlight close, but not on. Can you keep up?”
    She’d die before she admitted to anything else. “You’re the handicap,” she muttered, struggling to sound as calm and unaffected as he was.
    The bastard.
    In the diminishing light, his teeth flashed. A smile? A scowl? She didn’t know. She gripped the flashlight in her fist as he turned and whispered, “Hold on to my coat. We’re moving fast.”
    Juliet grabbed a handful of the jacket. “How will you see?”
    “Better than average night vision,” he said matter-of-factly, and eased into a jog.
    Before they’d taken twenty steps, she realized that concentrating on not tripping over rotting city would take more energy than she was sure she had. After only five minutes, Caleb was running in a smooth, easy cadence and she was struggling to breathe.
    Within ten long, interminably slow minutes, she was ready to beg for mercy. She clenched her teeth and kept up.
    She didn’t know how long they ran. At some point, Caleb slowed, asked her for the flashlight, and took off again, the thin light paving his way. Her breath rasped through her dry throat, rough as chalk, and her lungs seized as every breath