She leans closer. The veil brushes the screen and my body remembers a square window with no light and I choose this room instead. I choose her.
“Tell me what you want, Kitty” I prompt, because I’m about to die for something real to happen. “Do you want me to pull up that habit and eat that pretty pussy?”
There’s a sharp intake of breath, and beyond the mesh her mouth curves.Gotcha.
“Kneel.” Her voice is a whisper.
I do. It’s easy. It’s everything.
“Hands stay there,” she adds softly. “You don’t touch me unless I ask.”
“Yes.”
She exhales like I took the weight off her ribs. “If I say Sanctuary?—”
“We stop,” I finish. “We talk. You walk away.”
“And you don’t make a scene.”
“I don’t make a scene,” I repeat, because she needs to hear it twice.
The next minutes are a study in patience. Her fingertips ghost the screen. Mine don’t move. She explores what it feels like to be the one who approaches. The one who decides. The one who saysnow.
It’s a prayer I understand.
And then she presses her mouth to the mesh. There’s no real contact, just warmth and shared breath and the knowledge that if we took the screen away, it would be kissing—slow, deliberate, owned.
A kiss.
The intimacyof it is stunning. Unexpected.
“Okay?” she whispers.
“Perfect,” I say, and I mean it.
She laughs once, wrecked. “Don’t call me perfect.”
“Real. You feel real.”
We hold there until both our breathing changes and the nave goes wider and smaller at the same time. I keep my hands braced where she told me to. I don’t push. I don’t take. I pause, and the seconds ticking by turn into a flame so powerful it threatens to consume me entirely.
When she eases back, I don’t chase.
“I’m going to ask for one thing,” she says.
“Ask.”
“When we’re done here, you don’t follow me. You don’t hover. You don’t make my night smaller because you’re being careful and wanting to make sure I’m safe.”
I take that in like an instruction with teeth. “I won’t follow,” I say. “But I’ll make sure no one else does.”
She studies me, weighing whether that’s a loophole. “How?”
Tiernan is nearby. He’s always nearby, watching my back.
“I’ll text a friend to keep eyes on the street. Not on you. Just on the cars.”
“Fine.” A beat. “Thank you.”
