The tremor in her breath. The delicate press of her mouth. The way she rises onto her toes like she’s stepping into something she doesn’t fully understand but can’t turn away from.
She’s giving me a piece of trust she doesn’t have to spare. She’s giving me the beginning.
I cup her jaw slowly, carefully, like she’s something carved out of smoke and grief and I’m terrified of breaking the shape of her. I don’t deepen the kiss. I don’t claim. I don’t take. I let her set the pace, let her lean into me, let her decide if this is real or a moment she’ll retreat from when she remembers the world outside this suite.
Her breath catches against my lips, a tiny quiver, and I feel something in my chest tighten with a force that borders on painful. I’ve taken kisses in my life, plenty of them. Mostly hungry, eager, meaningless. But this… this is the first one I’ve everheld.
When she pulls back the slightest inch, like she’s waiting to see what I’ll do with the gift she just gave me, I follow her just enough to keep her breath mingling with mine.
"Jasmine," I murmur, and it’s the softest I’ve ever said any name in my life.
Her eyes lift to mine, wide and startled, as if she didn’t expect me to stay gentle. As if she didn’t expect gentleness from any man ever again.
I angle her face up with my thumb, brushing the corner of her mouth, and when she leans just slightly into my touch, something deep and primal shifts inside me. I lower my forehead to hers, my voice barely a breath. "If this is madness, I can live with it."
She shivers, but not from fear. I know the difference. This is the kind of shiver that threads itself through longing, the kind that blooms in someone who’s never been kissed like she’s allowed to want what follows.
Her hands slide up my chest, hesitant fingertips tracing the line of my shirt, and it’s the restraint in that touch that nearly undoes me. She’s not clinging. She’s exploring. Testing whether I’m solid. Whether I’m safe. Whether I mean what I say.
I wrap an arm around her waist, gentle but deliberate, drawing her slowly closer by inches. I want her to feel every moment. I want her to understand exactly how carefully I’m choosing her.
Her lips part again, a quiet invitation, and this time I tilt my mouth over hers, deepening the kiss with a slow, controlled pressure that tells her everything she needs to know.
I’m here. I’m steady. I’m not going anywhere.
She exhales into me, a soft, aching breath that hits me harder than any confession she could’ve spoken. I kiss her deeper, but only enough to let her feel the promise in it, not the hunger. She’s had enough experience of men taking what wasn’t offered freely.
I need her to know that with me,she leads the fall, and I’ll always catch her.
Her fingers curl lightly in my shirt, her lips warm beneath mine. And then she melts. Just a little. The tension she’s been holding for months softens beneath my hands, loosens, drifts away like smoke.
I feel it happen. I feel her choose me in that breath.
I break the kiss slowly, giving her one more gentle press of my mouth before pulling back far enough to see her face.
Her pupils are blown wide. Her lips are flushed. She looks overwhelmed in a way that makes something fierce rise in my chest.
There are moments in a man’s life that split him in half. Moments where he sees the path he’s always walked, and the one he’s meant to walk instead. This is mine. Right here, with her breath trembling and her courage pressed to my mouth.
I tuck a strand of damp hair behind her ear, barely grazing her skin.
"Whatever brought you to me," I say quietly, "whatever hell you ran from—" I brush my thumb over her lower lip, gentle enough to make her shiver again. "—I swear to you, it ends now."
Her breath stutters, but she doesn’t look away.
She’s not running. She’s standing in front of me with her heart cracked open, trying to understand why this feels like more than a kiss. Why this feels like the beginning of something that should be impossible.
My phone vibrates in my jacket pocket. And in the dim, golden light of the suite, with her body warm against mine, I know exactly what needs to come next.
Jasmine
"It’s time," he says without even looking at the phone. Only I can’t bring myself to let him go. His eyes are so pale I’m mesmerized by them.
Adrik’s entire body changes in front of me.
One moment he is the man who held my face gently and kissed me in a way that made my head spin. The next, something cold and dangerous slides into place behind his eyes. His shoulders square. His jaw hardens. His breathing slows in a way that feels controlled and violent at the same time.
It is like watching a demon unfurl inside him. All darkness and blood and terror.
