Cautious, like my instincts, my muscles, my bones, all know that I’m suddenly walking on a tightrope—and if I fall, I fall right into a crevasse.
One hand finds his forearm, and my fingers clasp.
Hand buried in my hair, the muscles in his forearm flex, as though fighting dark urges—and that sends chills down my spine.
I slide my other hand up his chest, feeling the shudder running through him with my touch.
He stills, his kiss pauses, and for a beat, a moment of stiff tension, in which I barely breathe, his mouth twists against mine.
My hand stills on his collar.
“You’re hurting me,” I whisper, a murmur, and still it feels too loud, too deafening for the quiet of the darkness in the forest. “My neck, my hair—it hurts, Samick.”
The torch fell to the forest floor. Now, it’s balanced on the crease between two rocks, angled in the wrong direction. Only some of the light threads over us.
I blink up at him, at those threads stretching over his chiselled face, the shadows of his lowered lashes darkening his eyes.
The softness of his lips, full and pink, graze along mine, corner to corner. Then, he pauses, and his teeth bare slightly against my skin. “Fragile.”
A breath is tugged out of me, like a frayed thread.
“Yeah.” I nod, faint, my mouth catching on his, plump skin brushing together. “Fragile.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
Dare’s warning came all that time ago—and it’s finally sinking in.
Samick brushes the tip of his nose over mine. But it isn’t a tender, beautiful thing.
There’s something about it, the way his dark eyes smoulder beneath his lashes, the faint twist of his mouth, like he fights to restrain himself, or fights his loathing of me and what I am—
It feels dangerous.
I’m not tricked into thinking the brush of his nose over mine, the graze of his mouth along my cheekbone, is affection. It’s control. Power. Authority.
But he’s gentler about it now.
His fingers relax in my hair.
His kiss comes softer.
Lips plush against mine, the strokes of his tongue are kinder. The crisp taste of mint and ice, and a faint wisp of smokiness.
It melts me, the gentleness of it, like I’m snared into him.
Even the glide of his fingers running down my hair to my nape is soft, delicate—and a soft breath wisps out of me, lured out by the blissful sensation.
But his hand leaves my nape. Travels down my silhouette, glides along my meagre curves—until his fingertips slide along my waistband to the button of my trousers.
My insides constrict.
A part of me wants this.
I’m ashamed of that part. It’s ugly and aching deep in my belly. It flames my cheeks, and I’m grateful for the privacy, that this happens in the darkness of the forest, just some faint wisps of torchlight breaching our secret.
But not all of me wants it.
So my bones are rigid and stiff beneath my muscles that move with him.
