“Neither can I.” I don’t mean to confess; it escapes anyway. “I didn’t think you were the type to lose sleep.”
He gives a small, humorless laugh. “I’m not.”
Something in his voice twists my stomach. The lighthouse across the bay throws its slow blink. I hold my breath as if it can time us.
“Do you regret it?” I ask. “This arrangement?”
He steps out beside me, close enough to share breath, not quite touching. “No. But sometimes I forget what I’m playing for.”
“And what are you playing for, Vasso?”
His jaw ticks. He looks at me, and for once the fire in his gaze isn’t taunting or possessive. It’s quiet. Honest, in a way that feels like standing on sand during an incoming tide.
“I wanted to take back what was stolen from my family.” His mouth twists. “And sure, to make you pay… all of you pay, but mostly you in particular.” His eyes drop to my mouth, linger, then meet mine again. “And make no mistake, I still intend to. That hasn’t changed.”
“Then what has?”
He saunters closer. The air tightens and the world shrinks to the inches between us. The truth hangs there, salt-scented and dangerous.
He isn’t talking about land.
And I don’t know if I hate it.
“I should go back to bed,” I whisper, not moving.
“Should?” he taunts, voice a velvet hook.
I hate myself for not being able to take my eyes off him.
The strong column of his throat, the hard line of his shoulders under cotton, the mouth I haven’t forgotten, the taste I still know—dry, faintly bitter, heat underneath. I want to taste him again, and that should scare me more than it does.
“Take what you need, baby,” he says, arrogance sliding over the words like oil over flame. “I’m feeling generous enough to allow it.”
I laugh, helpless and furious at once. “And if what I need just so happens to be what you want too?”
He shrugs, a lazy sinner. “Then it’s a happy coincidence. My only stipulation is that one step forward means the door locks behind you.” His gaze flicks to the handle. “There will be no stepping back.”
I stand there, breathing salt and choices, my pride and my body conducting a quiet war in my chest. I promised myself a hundred times I wouldn’t go first. Then a sound leaves me—small, traitorous, honest as a prayer.
I reach.
He catches me.
He doesn’t kiss me so much asclaimthe kiss, a heat-slick tongue slide that feels like a continuation of every unfinished sentence we’ve lived with for ten years.
I push back with my hands in his hair, nails at his nape, the soft thud of my spine finding the door as he presses me into his body until I can’t tell where mine ends. The lighthouse blinks; the room tilts; the balcony door fogs faintly with our breath.
We break only to breathe, then fall to it again, mouths hungry and unforgiving.
Somewhere between the kiss and the second breath, the carpet finds my knees—or maybe I find it. His hands are sure and unhurried, lifting, skimming, banishing silk until cool air kisses skin and then his mouth does.
He takes his time the way men do when they plan to ruin patience as a concept: slow at first, reverent, then devastatingly focused, learning again what draws me open and what unravels me completely.
The world narrows to pressure and heat and the way my fingers fist in his hair when I forget my own name. I try to hold on but he persuades me not to.
When release strikes, it’s a tide tearing loose moorings; the sound I make is nothing I’ve rehearsed.
When I can think again, I find myself in his arms. He lifts me easily, as if carrying me across thresholds is a right he didn’t steal, and lays me in my bed with ridiculous care.
