“I want…” I begin, but the rest collapses into a shaky exhale.
He brushes my cheek with the back of one claw, feather-light. “Tell me.”
“I want tonight to be ours,” I say. “No cameras. No drones. No crew. Just—us.”
His voice roughens. “You will have that.”
His hands slide down my sides, slow enough to make my breath hitch. Not teasing—worshiping. Memorizing. Relearning the map of me like he’s afraid the lines have changed.
“You’re being gentle,” I rasp, both surprised and undone by it.
He huffs a laugh against my shoulder. “I can be gentle.”
“I know,” I whisper back, curling closer. “But it scares me more than the other thing.”
His head lifts, eyes searching mine. “Why?”
“Because gentleness means you love me.”
He doesn’t breathe for a long moment.
Then, quietly—almost reverently—he says, “I do.”
My throat tightens. “Say it again.”
“I love you,” he murmurs, each word deliberate and steady, like he’s hammering a vow into the bones of the universe. “I love you, Liora. With every breath I take. With every breath I will ever take.”
I grab his face in both hands and kiss him so hard he groans into my mouth.
Everything after that blurs into heat and closeness and the kind of urgency that’s been simmering under our skin for years. He lays me down on the chaise, slow and careful, as if the moment itself is fragile. His hands move over me with a reverence that makes my eyes sting. He kisses my neck, my shoulder, the soft stretch of skin above my hip—every touch an apology, a promise, a confession.
“Liora,” he breathes, like my name is the prayer and he’s the worshiper.
I drag him down to me, wrapping myself around him, pulling him into my heat, into my heartbeat, into the place where all my fear dissolves and all my want sharpens.
“Don’t be gentle,” I whisper against his jaw.
He shudders. “Say that again.”
“Don’t be gentle.”
A low, devastating sound tears out of him. “I will be what you need.”
“I need you,” I breathe. “All of you.”
And then?—
The world goes molten.
I don’t remember the precise order of things after that. Just sensations. His mouth on my throat, my fingers digging into his back, our breaths tangling, the dressing-room lights blurring into golden haze. Laughing. Whispering each other’s names. Breaking apart and coming back together with a magnetic inevitability.
At one point I’m above him, his hands gripping my waist, eyes locked on mine like he’s witnessing something holy. At another, he’s braced above me, murmuring in Reaper, voice rough and trembling with everything he feels. There’s heat and tenderness and a hunger so fierce it borders on worship.
We don’t rush. We don’t hurry. The world can end outside that door and we wouldn’t notice.
When it’s over, when my pulse steadies and the room stops tilting, he pulls me against his chest, one large hand cradling the back of my head.
“You didn’t promise anything,” I murmur.
