The words land, sudden and clear. Something inside me tightens, then loosens, like a knot pulled and then released.
A fantasy… A sealed moment. Of course. We’re still in a construct.
My pulse shatters against my ribs as the idea takes root. No reckoning. No aftermath. Just this knife-edge between us.
And the freedom to choose.
His words settle in my chest like hot coals, comfort and burn at once.
I taste the steam, the mineral tang of the water threading between us. Somewhere in the real world a clock is ticking. But here, inside this stolen bubble of the trial… the hourglass’s sand is frozen.
No duty. No war.
No past. No future.
Just this moment, suspended in time, in a place that doesn’t exist. Just him, watching me.
Waiting.
I lift my hands to his wrists, barely brushing the skin, testing the boundary between us. It’s the first time I’ve touched him first without a blade or a spell already drawn.
His pulse is steady beneath my fingertips. Certain. Unwavering.
“One hour,” I murmur, more to myself than to him. “No armies, no ghosts, no coven, no futures?”
“One hour,” he confirms. The water laps at my ribs, and my heart answers like an echo. “I’ve even locked the sensation of the bond out, for the most part, so you don’t have to… think about that.”
I look at him, my fingers tightening around his wrists, and realize I don’t feel that constant, invasive hum of the bond in my consciousness, at the base of my skull… It’s just me. And it’s just him.
I could still walk away, right now. I could wade to the other side, dress, and demand he release the pause. I imagine myself doing it—cool, composed, Salem-steel. The image flickers, thin as mist.
Instead my palms slide up his forearms, mapping heat and sinew. He stays motionless; only his eyes narrow, tracking every inch.
“If I let you stay,” I say, “it doesn’t mean?—”
“I know,” he cuts in, soft. “It doesn’t mean you’re mine. It just means… you’re still here.”
His words hang—dangerous, translucent—in the steam between us.
Then, I move.
Not away… yet.
My palms finish their slow glide over corded forearms and settle on his shoulders. Beneath my thumbs his pulse quickens, onebetraying flutter against the vast steadiness of him. I feel the drag of his breath, the restrained coil of dragon heat, and it hits me, fully, in this moment that for the first time, the choice is mine alone.
The world narrows to the wet shine across his collarbones, to the scent of cedar and hot stone rising from his skin. I tip my forehead forward until it rests against his—barely a whisper, but it’s contact, deliberate, unguarded. His answering exhale stirs my damp hair. For a heartbeat we are just two creatures sharing the same warm air.
The pool shifts, water lapping higher. I skim my thumbs along the sharp line of his jaw, tracing the places where dragon pretends to be man. When I draw back far enough to meet his eyes, the amber has gone liquid, molten and uncertain.
“One hour,” I remind us both, voice raw. “Then the restraining order goes back into effect.”
He smirks softly, his hand rising not to claim, but to cradle the nape of my neck.
“One hour,” he repeats, like a vow. “Let me give you one moment that belongs only to you.”
An exhale escapes before I can cage it, half desperation, half relief. I nod against his palm. Then, with the kind of courage that only comes from not thinking too hard, I close the last finger-width of space between us.
My mouth finds his before caution can interject. The kiss is not gentle—more skirmish than surrender, teeth and heat and the edge of violence. Because the terrible, honest, treacherous truth is that I do want this. My body, freed from the rigid discipline of my mind, craves the heat, the strength, the raw, possessive power of him.
