Enough to exhale without it shaking.
His chest is warm against mine, heart hammering steady through the thin fabric of his shirt. The weight of him—real, solid, unyielding—grounds me in a way nothing else does. We’re standing in the narrow entrance of my apartment, the scent of lavender from the old wall diffuser curling around us like memory.
I laugh, quiet and unexpected. It breaks something in both of us. He pulls back just enough to look at me, and in the low hallway light, I see him—not the crime syndicate whisper, not the kindergarten hero, not the man with shadows under his skin.
Just him.
Jav.
“You sure?” he asks. Not pressing. Just asking.
I nod once. “If we’re doing this,” I whisper, “then I want to feel it. All of it. No more halfway.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. And when he kisses me—it’s slow.
Not soft.
Not timid.
Just… present.
Like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my breath, the taste of my fear, the sound I make when his hands slide under the back of my shirt and find bare skin. I curl my fingers into the collar of his shirt and pull him toward the living room. We move as one—familiar but new, like a language we used to speak and are relearning word by word.
We don’t rush.
Not this time.
By the timewe make it to the couch, my shirt’s half off and his boots are forgotten somewhere near the door. The lamp casts warm golden light across the room, catching the curve of his jaw, the tension in his arms. His skin is warm beneath my palms, muscles taut from whatever he’s still not saying—but I don’t push. Not now.
I kiss the hollow of his throat and feel him breathe into me.
He smells like rain and heat and something older, something buried—gun oil maybe, or blood. But beneath it is a scent that’s become familiar: the cologne he wears only when he’s near me. The one that smells like forest and fire.
He threads a hand through my hair, guiding my mouth back to his with a reverence that makes my eyes sting. This isn’t about lust. Not just that. It’s something closer to pleading.
Like if he touches me gently enough, maybe everything broken will start to knit.
His hands move slow—sliding up under my top, fingers brushing the slope of my ribs, the curve of my spine. When helifts the shirt over my head, it’s with the same care he’d use to unarm a bomb.
He traces the scar above my hip with the pad of his thumb. “What’s this from?”
“Ben. One very sharp toy. I didn’t see it in the dark.”
He chuckles low in his throat. “Brutal.”
“Five-year-olds are a gang. You’d know.”
He doesn’t reply, but the smile in his eyes says everything. He kisses the scar like it’s sacred.
My breath catches.
By the timewe’re skin to skin, nothing else matters.
The world falls away—no school, no threats, no old lives chasing us through alleyways and boardrooms. Just the rhythm of this moment, and the sound of our names in each other’s mouths. His hands map my body like a prayer he’s afraid to forget. He takes his time—reverent, aching.
“You’re too good,” I whisper when his lips find the inside of my wrist. “You’re too careful.”
He pauses. “Tell me to stop, I stop.”
