My pulse is a drum.
My legs shake.
The blindfold makes everything hotter.
Darker.
Worse.
Better.
No.
Not better.
Wrong.
His fingers curl into my hip through the fabric of my dress, anchoring me with a grip that is too sure, too steady, too much.
“Noah…”
It’s a whisper of fear, apology, and something traitorous that tastes like desire.
I shouldn’t want this.
I shouldn’t want anything right now.
Not from him.
Not from anyone.
But the darkness turns every touch into something fevered and unbearable.
Every breath into a threat I can’t see coming.
Every sound into a promise I can’t decode.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, voice shaking uncontrollably as his hand slides up, slowly, slowly, mapping the curve of my waist, my ribs, my trembling sternum. “I’ll do better. I’ll be better. I’ll?—”
The breath he exhales against my neck is low and rough and it tears a broken noise out of me before I can swallow it.
I reach for him blindly, fingers curling into the front of his shirt — silk, warm, familiar.
Noah.
It’s Noah.
My voice breaks: “Please… just—just say something.”
He still doesn’t.
He simply tilts my head with a firm hand in my hair, guiding me into a darkness even deeper than the blindfold, a space where I can’t see, can’t think, can only feel?—
His breath.
His hands.
His presence.
