Unmasked, a real face behind the smoke, the vicious tongue and snark and sharp edges.
Not the me I was pretending to be.
He likes aristos me.
Now that I think about it, sort of makes sense.
Eric likes Asta—and Asta is a fucking bitch.
He thought I was sweet. Someone to pity.
Now he’s seen me for who I am.
And he got on his knees.
I slump against the wall.
The shift of movement brushes up my body. He pushes up from the floor until he’s standing over me in the dark.
And his mouth finds mine.
He kisses me. Softly. Slow and lingering, tender.
I taste myself on him.
It’s faint, like he dragged his tongue over his own lips and gathered up my flavour, but it’s there.
His hands reach over my hips and smoothen out the crumpled, bunched hem of my dress.
The gesture is gentle, loving somehow, and I let my lashes shut with the rush of warmth coursing through me.
The smoothness of his cologne floods my senses.
I inhale it like a sweet bakery air.
His lips find my jawline and, for a beat, he just stands with me, letting me come all the way down from the summit.
But I feel it.
The smile.
The curve of his mouth, however small and slight and lazy, is a smile regardless.
For a long while, we stay like this, melted into one another, a tenderness in the way we exist.
I don’t know affection.
Not like this.
I know false smiles and lies and masks.
This, whatever this is, feels true.
Right now, if he asked me to walk into fire with him, I think I would. Just to stay in the cloud of adoration.
But it comes to a close when he plants that final, firm kiss on my cheekbone—and it feels so much like an ending that something inside of me twists.
I’m not ready to go yet.
