“You noticed,” he murmurs. “Sorry. I shouldn’t say that. Not with… everything.”
The words hang in the air between us. Everything? Is he talking about my sight?
“People refer to me seeing things, or looking at things, or noticing things all the time. It’s natural. I don’t want you to worry about that.”
I turn around before I can talk myself out of it. There’s hardly a whisper’s breath between us. I raise my hand, finding his jaw. His rough stubble scrapes along my fingertips.
The solid line of a man holding himself painfully still.
He inhales sharply, like the touch sliced through him, and he’s learning how to breathe again.
His breath ghosts over my lips. And then…
I kiss him. Soft. Testing the hope that maybe I’m allowed to want something again.
His lips are warm. Surprised and still. For half a heartbeat, my heart catches in my throat. What if I’ve made a mistake and crossed a line? I’m about to pull away when suddenly, he’s not still at all.
His mouth moves with mine, heat pouring into me so fast I gasp against his lips. But just as suddenly as he claimed my lips,he pulls back, breath shuddering against my cheek. I feel the absence of his mouth like a cold draft.
“Violet… this isn’t—I shouldn’t?—”
His voice fractures, caught between want and something heavier. Something he’s been carrying alone. My heartbeat stumbles. My stomach drops. My fingers curl against nothing.
“If you don’t want this,” I whisper, swallowing hard enough that it hurts, “I’ll stop.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s thick with something…
The air is so perfectly still, as if it’s holding its breath with us.
He’s still so close that his ragged breath brushes my lips. “I don’t want you to stop,” he says.
A tremor rolls through me, soft and violent all at once. “I don’t want to stop either.”
That’s all it takes.
The space between us collapses like he’s been holding himself back for so long that the moment he let go, everything else followed.
His hand finds my waist. Mine rises instinctively to his chest. Our breaths tangle. And then we’re kissing again.
I’m lost. He’s lost. He pulls me closer, then scoops me up, cupping my ass. The kiss turns ravenous, as if he’s starved for my lips. It’s all heat and breath and want. My fingers curl in his shirt, clutching at muscle and warmth and the faint, intoxicating scent of his skin. The world narrows to the slide of his mouth on mine, the steady strength in his hands, the soft, helpless sound he makes when I pull him closer still.
“Violet,” he groans against my lips, voice strained and wrecked, “tell me what you want.”
“You,” I whisper, breath trembling. “Just you.”
He turns me and places me on the kitchen counter, the marble cool beneath me. His palms glide to my thighs, strongand certain, guiding me open just enough that he can step between my knees. His forehead presses to mine, like he’s at war with himself, and that alone unravels me.
His scent wraps around me, and this time it’s wilder. Something hums under his skin like a secret trying to break free. Every nerve in my body lights up.
“Violet,” he breathes, his nose brushing mine as if he can’t stay away even for the space of a heartbeat. His thumb strokes along the inside of my knee, and everything in me falls into him without hesitation. It’s heat and recognition. A pull I don’t understand but can’t resist.
I lift my hands, finding his jaw, the curve of his cheek, the tension there like he’s holding himself back from… everything.
He shudders.
“Tell me if this is too much,” he whispers, voice low and frayed at the edges.
“It’s not,” I murmur. “Jason… it’s not.”
