“I’m not usually the...space-holding type.”
“Maybe you weren’t. But you are now.”
Olivia slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.
It was ugly, uneven, and perfect.
And for the first time, maybe in her whole life, she didn’t feel like she had to earn the room she was standing in.
She had arrived.
Not in a blaze of accolades.
Not with a diploma or a title.
But as herself.
And for everyone gathered around her, that was enough.
The sun had long since dipped below the jagged line of the horizon, leaving behind the kind of dusk that smelled like warm stone and flowering sage. The courtyard glowed with soft lantern light, and laughter echoed from across the retreat where a few guests still lingered, sipping tea and finishing late dinners.
Olivia, however, was already inside Emma’s cabin, barefoot, heart thudding beneath her ribs.
Emma shut the door behind them, the click loud in the quiet space.
Neither of them said a word.
The air between them pulsed, thick with heat and promise, threaded with something deeper now. Something undeniable.
Emma’s gaze dragged slowly down Olivia’s body. She didn’t touch her. Not yet. Just looked at her the way someone might look at art they weren’t sure they were allowed to touch—devoted, reverent, hungry.
Olivia stepped forward first.
Her fingers found the edge of her sundress, and she pulled it up and over her head in one slow, deliberate motion.
She wasn’t trembling this time.
She wasn’t waiting to be claimed.
She was offering.
And when she stood there, completely bare in the warm amber glow, her skin sun-kissed and marked faintly with Emma’s earlier touches, she held Emma’s gaze without flinching.
“I want to show you who I am,” Olivia said. “Not the version everyone’s seen. Not the careful one.”
Emma exhaled sharply, almost reverently. “Then show me, darlin’.”
Olivia closed the space between them in three measured steps.
She tugged at the hem of Emma’s shirt, lifting it slowly. Her palms skimmed upward, following curves and strength, until the cotton gave way to skin. She kissed every inch she exposed—Emma’s ribs, the slope of her collarbone, the sharp line of her jaw.
When Emma’s shirt joined the rest of the discarded clothing, Olivia pressed her hands flat to Emma’s stomach, pushed her back against the edge of the bed, and guided her down onto it.
Tonight, she wasn’t just receiving.
She was taking.
She straddled Emma, feeling the hot glide of skin on skin, the delicious friction, the low groan that spilled from Emma’s throat when Olivia leaned down and whispered against her lips, “Let me touch you.”
