“I know,” I said again. “But I’m still the man who’d die to keep you safe.”
Scarlett reached up and brushed her thumb over the scar that ran from the corner of my eye to my jaw. “You don’t have to protect me from you, Kingston.”
“I’m not sure I know how to stop.”
“Then we start slow.” Her voice was quiet, but sure. “We start honest.”
I nodded, a strange mix of fear and relief coursing through me. “Okay,” I said. “Honest.”
She rested her head against my chest again, her fingers curling lightly around mine. For the first time in years, I let myself believe that maybe I hadn’t lost her forever after all.
Scarlett
I should’ve been afraid. Not because I didn’t want him, but because I’d spent years building walls he could never scale, stitching myself together with spite and silence and the lies I told myself about being over him. But lying next to him with nothing between us but the afterglow of having him inside me, I wasn’t afraid. I was home.
His arms tightened around me like he could feel the shift. Like his heart knew mine had cracked open in surrender.
“You okay?” he whispered, his lips brushing my hairline.
I nodded. “Are you?”
He hesitated. “Not even a little.”
I smiled against his chest. He was being honest. That meant something. I rolled toward him, draping my leg over his hip as I shifted to face him. The light from the lantern on the nightstand flickered across his face, softening the scar he’d tried to hide. He looked at me like I was the most precious thing he’d ever touched. Like I was breakable.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I whispered.
“Like what?”
“Like I might disappear.”
His hand came up to brush a curl from my cheek. “You’ve been gone for a long time.”
I swallowed, heat pooling low in my belly. “So have you.”
The words hung between us a moment, heavy with everything we hadn’t said. Then I kissed him. This time, there was no hesitation. No space for anger or regret. Only skin and want and the deep, aching need to remember each other again.
Kingston groaned low in his throat, flipping us gently until I was under him. His body settled over mine like he’d been carved to fit me, and the second our mouths met again, I was lost. His hands skimmed my waist, my ribs, the curve of my hip. Everywhere he touched, fire followed. I arched into him, desperate for more.
“I missed you,” I gasped between kisses, my voice rough with need. “So much it broke me.”
“I know,” he whispered, his mouth trailing down my throat. “I broke too.”
I pulled him closer. “Then let’s stop breaking and start putting each other back together again.”
“Starting now,” he said.
What happened next wasn’t slow and reverent. It was desperate and wild and full of years we couldn’t get back. We kissed like we were trying to rewrite time. Ran our hands over each other like we were trying to memorize everything we’d lost. And we came together like we might not ever get the chance again.
When he drove inside me, the years disappeared. He filled me completely, our bodies fitting back together like we’d never been apart. His mouth found mine again, swallowing every sound I made. I clung to him, my fingers digging into his back, my legs locked around his hips, holding him close while he moved with the kind of reverence that shattered me all over again. This wasn’t sex. It was a reclamation. A resurrection of what we’d had before and what we could have again. And when I came apart in his arms, it wasn’t just my body that gave in. Itwas every part of me that had ever loved him. Every part that still did.
He followed right after, groaning my name into the curve of my neck. And then we lay there, our limbs tangled and our hearts exposed, the storm outside no match for the one that had finally passed between us.
I didn’t know what would happen when morning came. But right now, in this quiet moment wrapped in his arms, I believed we still had a chance. Love wasn’t finished with us yet.
His mouth was on my shoulder, his breath hot against my skin, while his hands moved in slow reverence over my waist, down the curve of my back, across the swell of my hip. He touched me like he’d never get to do it again. Like he still loved me.
I hadn’t expected it to be like this. I’d told myself I wouldn’t feel anything. I was getting it out of my system… the old memories and heat and need. But Kingston didn’t make love like a man trying to forget. He did it like a man who never stopped remembering. And so help me, I remembered everything too.
