The sensation was overwhelming. He filled her completely, and for a moment neither of them moved, just breathed together in the charged silence.
"Okay?" he asked, voice strained.
"More than okay." She pulled him down for a kiss. "Move."
He did.
What followed was unlike anything they'd shared before. This wasn't playful teasing or passionate urgency. This was claiming. Every thrust felt like a declaration, every kiss like a promise.
I love you, his body said. I want you. I need you. Stay.
And Edie answered in kind, matching his intensity, meeting him movement for movement until the pleasure crested and broke,sweeping them both under in a wave of sensation that left her gasping.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the wreckage of his perfectly made bed, breathing hard, skin cooling.
Tarmek traced patterns on her shoulder, his touch gentle. "Stay tonight."
It wasn't a question, but Edie heard the plea beneath it. The fear.
"Yes."
His arm tightened around her, and she felt him exhale—a long, shuddering release of tension she hadn't realized he was holding.
"We still need to talk," she murmured. "About everything. About what this means."
"I know." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Tomorrow?"
Tomorrow.
The word felt heavy with promise and uncertainty. They'd confessed things tonight—raw, desperate things—but confession wasn't resolution. Love wasn't a solution to the fundamental differences between them.
She still didn't know how to stay.
He still didn't know how to let go.
But that was a problem for tomorrow.
Tonight, she let herself sink into the warmth of his body, let herself pretend that this could last, let herself believe—just for a few hours—that she could have this.
Could have him.
She fell asleep with his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
Edie woke to grey predawn light filtering through unfamiliar curtains.
For a moment, she was disoriented—wrong ceiling, wrong smell, wrong everything. Then the previous night came rushing back, and her chest tightened.
Tarmek.
He was still asleep beside her, one massive arm thrown across her waist, his face relaxed in a way she'd never seen while he was awake. Without the tension of consciousness, he looked younger. Softer. Almost peaceful.
I love you, he'd said.
The words echoed in her memory, warm and terrifying and impossible. Nobody had ever said that to her before—not like that, not with such raw, desperate sincerity.
She should be happy.
She was happy.
