I lifted her face, my thumb tracing the velvet of her lower lip. “After?”
“What if we win?” she whispered, her eyes searching mine for a truth I wasn't sure I was ready to give. “What happens to us, Thal, once the smoke clears and the debt is gone?”
Her question hit me like a physical blow. I knew what I wanted—I wanted her locked in my world forever. But Zeno had spent a decade making her a prisoner. I wasn’t going to be the man who built her a new cage.
“Whatever you want, Daphne. That’s the only answer that matters,” I said, my voice dropping to a rough, jagged edge. “Zeno never gave you a choice. I’m giving you the only one I have. If we survive tomorrow, and you tell me you want to walk away, I’ll let you. I’ll burn the world to make sure you have a path to run on, even if it’s away from me.”
She looked at me in a long beat of stunned silence, her breath shallow. She wasn't used to holding the power, and I could feel her trembling under the weight of it.
“I believed I was a fortress, Daphne,” I rasped, pulling her so close there was no air left between us. “For ten years, I built a world of ice and called it strength. I thought that by not loving anyone, I left nothing for my enemies to seize.”
I tilted her chin up, forcing her to see the raw, terrifying obsession in my eyes. “But the moment I saw you in Aruba, the walls cracked and turned to dust. You aren't my weakness, Daph. You’re the only reason I want to stay alive to see the sun rise. So you have the final say. But know this: I’m standing beside you until you tell me to stop. And maybe even after that.”
I took a deep breath, the truth piercing straight to my heart as it spilled from my lips. It felt good to let it all out. Especially to Daphne.
She had been the catalyst for my admitting that I wanted more.
“After we met on the island, though, everything changed. I was fine pushing away all those basic desires before I’d met you. But it was you, Daphne, don’t you see? It was easy to deny myself all that stuff before, to tell myself it was because I didn’t have time or space for it in my life. I told myself that having a partnerwould have been a weakness on my part. Having love in my life would have been a risk that could have destroyed everything I’d worked so hard to build, and I thought I’d never let anything destroy it.”
I stopped speaking, peering into her sparkling eyes. I wanted to make sure she was hearing me, loud and clear, that she understood every single word. It was essential that I got through to her.
“But none of that was the truth, Daphne. I just hadn’t met the person worth sacrificing everything for. Not until you.”
“Oh, Thal,” she said, looking up at me with the deepest pools of emotion I thought I might drown in. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Daphne,” I whispered, stroking her cheek, “you mean more to me than any power or empire ever could. All I want is you. Wherever you want to be.”
I bent my head, kissing her.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and I kissed them all away. Her breath caught as she smiled through them, looking up at me.
“Thank you for saying all that,” she whispered.
“I meant every word, beauty,” I replied, kissing her again. Her lips were warm, soft, and pliant, with a pulse of emotion flowing between us—alive, strong, and genuine.
She pulled back, her eyes sincere but filled with uncertainty.
“I don’t know what I want yet,” she said. “But I do know that I want you by my side, Thal.”
“That’s all I care about.”
“I care about you,” she whispered, her smile shining at me like sunshine, the fear and anxiety in her eyes now replaced with hope and optimism, and what I hoped was a tiny golden thread of feeling safe.
“I love you,” I said, throwing caution to the wind. “I’ve loved you since that first night in the Caribbean, Daphne.”
“Thal, I—” she whispered, but I stopped her words with my lips. I pulled her even closer, needing her body as close to mine as I could get it, wanting to wrap myself around her soul and protect her forever.
I didn’t need her to say it in return. I knew.
I saw it in her eyes, heard it in her voice, felt it in her touch.
We were both so far over the edge.
Whatever happened now? We were a team.
The vulnerability we shared. The trust we’d built.
The love we’d grown from the tiniest seed that we’d planted in the Caribbean…
