The bed protests as I drop her onto it, crawling over her like gravity’s been reversed. Her legs part beneath me, her arms wrapping around my neck as I sink into her. She gasps—sharp and guttural—and the sound nearly undoes me.
There’s no finesse to this. No ceremony. Just heat, sweat, and the deep thrum of something we don’t have words for.
She bites me again when I grab her hips, harder this time, and I welcome the pain. Return it. I leave marks on her—fingertips seared into skin, the arc of my teeth at the base of her throat. She rakes her nails down my back and I hiss against her shoulder, driving harder, deeper, until she cries out against my neck.
Still no words.
Just fire.
We move like we’re trying to undo each other. Like everything we’ve been hiding—fear, longing, control—is crashing down all at once. I kiss her because I have to. Because not kissing her would feel more dangerous than anything else. Her mouth tastes like salt and sweat and something sweeter underneath. Something I haven’t earned yet but want anyway.
She arches beneath me, pulls me down, and we come undone together—loud, ragged, desperate.
And then it’s quiet again.
We’re both breathing hard, skin flushed and slick, limbs tangled in the center of her narrow bed. She turns her face toward me, eyes half-lidded but watching, always watching. Her fingers trace slow lines along my ribs like she’s memorizing the aftershocks.
I can’t speak. I don’t want to break the spell.
But something’s shifted. Something deeper than lust.
Something permanent.
And terrifying.
And inevitable.
“You gonna disappear again?”
Her voice breaks the silence between us like a crack in the glass—sharp, unexpected, and full of something brittle underneath. I don’t flinch, but it cuts all the same.
I’m standing by the tiny window in her room, still half-dressed, cooling off in the thick night air. Her bed creaks when she shifts behind me, but I don’t turn. The streetlight outside flickers in that annoying rhythm I’ve come to know too well, throwing shadows that twitch across the walls.
“I’m not planning on it,” I say, slow and flat.
It’s the truth. As much of it as I can give.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t push. Just pulls the sheet tighter over herself and stares at the ceiling like it might offer her something I won’t. Can’t. Won’t.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my back to her, elbows on my knees, hands knotted. The air between us is too full. Too warm. I breathe through it like I would fog on a kill job—measured, controlled.
She doesn’t ask for more. I don’t offer it.
But I don’t leave.
That should mean something, I guess.
She doesn’t ask me to stay. Doesn’t shift to make space. But I fold down onto the mattress beside her like it’s the only place left in the goddamn system I trust not to explode beneath my feet.
We lie there for what feels like hours. She turns to the wall, spine tight like a wire, legs drawn up. I stay flat on my back, arms crossed over my chest like I’m in a coffin, staring at the ceiling while the city hums outside.
Her breathing stays shallow. Awake. I know she’s not sleeping.
Neither am I.
The bed is too soft. The quiet too loud. I don’t know what to do with myself in stillness like this—no mission, no weapons, no clear enemy except the mess inside my own damn chest.
And her.
