Pulled out.
Left me clenching on nothing.
I whimpered, hips chasing air.
He leaned in, lips brushing mine without kissing.
“You don’t come until I’m inside you,” he said. “Until I’ve stretched you open and filled you so completely you forget your own name. Until then—” He dragged his wet fingers across my throat, painting my skin with my own arousal. “—you stay aching. You stay mine.”
He stepped back.
Fixed my clothes again—slow, careful, torturous.
Then he turned me toward the window, arms wrapping around me from behind, chin resting on my shoulder.
We looked out at the snow together.
Silent.
My body screaming.
His presence the only thing keeping me upright.
And still—no release.
Only the promise of more.
Of everything.
When it finally came.
Later, I lay in his bed—not curled into him, not held.
Beside him.
Equal space. Equal weight.
It felt intentional.
He didn’t touch me as sleep came. His presence alone was enough—heavy, real, inescapable.
As my eyes drifted closed, one thought surfaced with terrifying clarity:
This wasn’t about sex anymore.
It was about orientation.
Cassian wasn’t pulling me into darkness.
He was teaching me how to stand in it.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to the light.
12
Iwoke up alone.
Alone in the way a woman wakes when she knows the man she chose is somewhere in the house—awake before her, deliberate, already thinking.
