The low temperature of the safe made ice crystals form on her eyelashes.
Amelia clutched her faded work permit and watched the three-meter-thick bulletproof glass in front of her oozing with chill. When the surveillance camera suddenly turned, she hurriedly pulled down the sleeves of her frayed sweater.
"Fingerprint verification failed." A mechanical female voice pierced the silence.
The blue light of the iris scan suddenly lit up at this moment. She heard the sound of security boots hitting the floor tiles behind her, mixed with the current noise of the intercom: "Intruders were found in Area B, suspected of stealing "Blood Rose"..."
In a panic, she bumped into the warm chest behind her.
The dark gray cashmere coat passed by her nose, and the smell of cedar mixed with gunpowder made her knees weak. The man's slender fingers pinched the back of her neck, and the Patek Philippe on his wrist reflected a cold light, and the sound of the second hand suddenly became deafening.
"Mr. Sterling's temperature is rising." An electronic prompt sounded from the dark, "Currently 34.2℃, 0.5℃ above the baseline."
Amelia was forced to look up and look into a pair of icy gray-blue eyes. There was a thin scar at the end of his left eye, like a crack cut by a famous knife on a snowy field. When his thumb brushed across her collarbone, the alarm suddenly screamed.
"Abnormal heart rate." The mechanical voice became urgent, "120bpm, adrenaline surged 300%."
She inhaled in pain - the temperature of the man's palm was horrifyingly low, as if she was touching a piece of cold iron. Those rumors suddenly flooded into her mind: the living devil of the Sterling Group, who slaughtered the board of directors at the age of sixteen, and loved to see his opponents frozen into ice sculptures in the Arctic Circle...
"Want to touch this painting so much?" Noah Sterling's voice was like sandpaper rubbing across the ice. He pulled open his tie to cover her eyes, and the hideous old wound on his wrist was revealed when the silk fabric slipped off.
Amelia shivered in the dark. Skin hunger began to attack, and every cell was screaming for contact. When the man's leather-gloved hands pinched her waist, she shamefully whimpered.
"Body temperature conductivity 89.7%." The AI butler suddenly spoke, "It is recommended to maintain the current position for 17 minutes and 32 seconds."
The bulletproof glass reflected a distorted reflection: he was dressed in a suit as if attending a funeral, and her canvas shoes were still stained with oil paint. When the alarm sounded for the third time, Noah suddenly bit her earlobe and sneered: "Little restorer, when your father mortgaged the gallery, didn't he teach you how to hide from surveillance?"
Amelia's tears condensed on her cheeks. She could hear his heartbeat through his shirt, like a volcano trapped under a glacier.
Fireworks suddenly exploded outside the glass curtain wall. In the New Year's bell, Noah tore open her collar, and the rose birthmark glowed under the ultraviolet light. His pupils contracted violently, and the mechanical sound of the chip implanted roared in his head:
[Genetic match 99.999%]
When the temperature in the vault dropped to minus 20 degrees, Amelia saw him take off his gloves. The moment the pale fingers inserted into her fingers, all the screens in the dome burst into garbled text at the same time.
"From today on," he licked the ice off her eyelashes, "your heartbeat belongs to me."