I huff out a quiet breath, my hand settling firmly at her waist, keeping her close .
I look at the tiny freckles dusted across her nose. All twenty-seven of them. I counted them once, back when I was still learning her, back when knowing her felt like something I had to earn piece by piece.
But I didn’t stop there.
My gaze traces over her like memory does the work for me.
The two hidden just behind her left ear. The ones most people would never think to look for.
The two tucked behind her right knee.
And the three soft ones beneath her left breast that I kiss at every given opportunity.
Every inch of her—mapped.
My jaw tightens slightly before I drag my focus back to her face.
Her skin is flawless, pale and smooth.
Her lips pull my attention next. Rose-pink, that sharp, perfect cupid’s bow I’ve traced more times than I can count, committed to memory in ways that go beyond sight.
Then her eyes.
Grey—but not empty of color. They move, shift, pull—like stormlight caught behind glass, something alive beneath the surface that always draws me in deeper.
And her hair…wild, untamed, those red curls falling wherever they please, catching the light like fire that refuses to be contained.
I exhale slowly through my nose, tightening my hold on her thighs.So fucking beautiful.
“Right now?” I murmur, my thumb brushing along her side, “Nothing that takes you away from me.”
My gaze softens, but my grip doesn’t.
“You can cook later,” I add. “We’ve got time.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Seraphina
Slow It Down – Benson Boone
True to his word, Trey keeps me with him.
We shower together in a quiet that feels almost reverent, like the world can’t quite reach us in here, and when we step out, he dresses me himself. One of his cotton T-shirts slides over my skin—soft, familiar, the same one I used to steal before everything fractured into survival and locked doors and watching the world through reinforced glass.
It settles on me like something borrowed from another life.
Or maybe like something he refuses to let me lose.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him as he moves around me, and even in the stillness, my mind won’t stay quiet. It keeps circling back to him. To Gideon. To the image I can’t erase no matter how hard I try. Trey taken again, dragged back into the basement, hurt in ways I can’t undo, or worse, not coming back at all.
I can’t let that happen.
I won’t survive it twice.
Every night, I pray now. Not the kind I used to say out of habit, but more desperate. I ask God to watch him. To keep him breathing. To keep him here, with me, where I can see him. Where I can reach him.
Because without him, I don’t know what I am anymore.
