Not from the heat. Not from surprise.
But from how right it felt to be here with him. After everything. After the storm.
He set me down gently, his hands lingering at my waist. He didn’t let go.
Our eyes met.
And what I saw in his gaze made the floor feel unsteady beneath me.
It wasn’t just desire.
It was something more dangerous.
Something real.
“Stay,” he said, barely above a whisper.
But it didn’t sound like a request.
It sounded like a line in the sand.
I nodded, slow and sure. My voice wouldn’t come. I didn’t trust it yet—not with the way my chest was rising and falling like I’d just run a marathon. Questions circled my mind, wild and frantic, but none of them mattered in this moment.
Because I didn’t want to run.
Not anymore.
He reached up and brushed his thumb across my cheek, gentle as the storm outside was wild. His touch found the dried blood near my temple—Sloane’s mark, faded now but still there.
His jaw tightened.
“You’re safe here,” he murmured.
And for the first time since all of this began…
I believed him.
He set me down in the entryway, and the chill of the tile seeped into my bare feet, sending a shiver racing up my spine. My clothes clung to my skin like a second, soaked layer—heavy, cold, unforgiving.
We were both drenched.
But I barely felt the rain anymore.
I only felt him.
The heat radiating off his body. The quiet, restrained storm still burning in his eyes. The ache that pulsed between us like a second heartbeat.
He reached for me slowly.
Deliberately.
His hands trembled—not from nerves, but from the sheer force of holding himself back. Like he thought if he touched me the wrong way, I’d vanish. Like this moment might shatter under the weight of what we both knew it meant.
That hesitation?
That restraint?
It wrecked me.
