“So…” he whispered, barely audible. “What happens now?”
I looked at him. Open. Unarmored. Honest. Something in me stilled at the sight of him like this—not perfect, not whole, but trying. Not safe. But real.
“Now?” I echoed, brushing my lips over his knuckles. “Now we find out what it means to survive each other.”
His breath hitched, the air caught in his throat like he wasn’t sure if he was about to laugh or cry. Then he nodded. Pulling me closer until our foreheads touched, breaths mingling in the narrow space between. His heart beat against my palm like a drum in the dark.
In that fragile, dangerous calm—we let ourselves fall.
Sleep took me quickly. The last thing I heard was the steady rhythm beneath my hand, that wild, desperate metronome that meant: I’m still here.
CHAPTER 25
THEO
The morning light crept in slow and golden, bleeding through the gauzy curtains in long streaks across the sheets tangled at our feet. It painted us in warmth, in silence, in something that felt too delicate to name.
Even though I was wide awake, I didn’t move. Sin was half on top of me, his breath soft and steady against my collarbone, one leg thrown over mine like he’d meant to anchor me to the bed, to this moment, to him. His arm was curled possessively around my waist, lips parted in sleep, hair wild from the night before.
My hand moved almost of its own accord—slow strokes down his spine, fingertips grazing over each vertebra like I was trying to memorize him, like if I just touched him long enough, everything else might stop spinning.
But it didn’t. Not really. Memories and flashbacks invaded my mind, trying to shatter the peaceful bubble I was in.
My father’s voice echoed in my head—cold and clipped, every syllable soaked in control. “If you don’t do what you’re told. Honor your obligations, you’ll lose everything.”
For the first time, my father saw the man I wanted to be. Not the broken boy who’d stood in front of a hundred polished strangers and told them the truth. How the perfect Astor heirwas sent away when he was fifteen because he kissed a boy. Not the man who watched Sin fall apart in front of that room, rage and pain leaking out in broken, jagged edges.
The man who was finally strong enough to fight for what he wanted. For what really mattered after spending my life jumping through his hoops. It was exhilarating and equally terrifying.
And then I’d left. Walked away from the name. The inheritance. The cage they called legacy. I’d watch it all fall in the name of love.
Now… I had this. Sin, warm and tangled around me. The promise of a future within our grasp. I knew Sin had reservations about me, about us, but… My hands trembled. The echo of something terrifyingly close to freedom, pounding in my ribs like a second heartbeat.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Sin mumbled against my chest, voice thick with sleep.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Sorry.”
He shifted, propping his chin on my chest so he could look up at me with sleep-bleary eyes. “Don’t be. Just… don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I reached down, brushing my thumb across the line of his jaw. “You scared the shit out of me last night.”
He scoffed softly. “Join the club.”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“You almost did.”
Silence stretched between us, long and heavy—the kind that carried a thousand unsaid things, all too raw to name.
I dipped my head, pressing my lips to his—tentative at first, a question hanging between us. But when he kissed me back, he wasn’t cautious. He was needy. Desperate. A collision of breath and hunger that tasted like longing and old wounds.
I kissed him deeper, greedy for more, like if I kissed him long enough, hard enough, maybe the ache in my chest would quiet. Maybe I could press our mouths together and erase the things we couldn’t speak aloud.
He kissed me like he felt it too. Like he wanted to disappear inside me just to escape the rest of the world. Because we both knew—outside that door, the world was waiting to destroy us.
So we didn’t move. We stayed tangled in each other, letting time bleed away as our hands learned each other again. Slow. Deliberate. Starved. Chasing a want that smoldered low in our bellies until it burned up the air between us and made words unnecessary.
It started with a breath, a brush of fingers, a meeting of mouths. And then—he moved. He slid around the bed, settling over me, his knees bracketing my shoulders, his cock heavy and flushed, brushing against my lips with a teasing insistence I’d felt in my bones.
