I rise onto my toes and kiss him—slow, deep, and aching. Not the frantic kind from last night, but the kind that saysI’m here. I’m still here. Stay.
Our tongues touch, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of my neck, thumb stroking my jaw like I’m something infinitely precious. The kiss deepens, softens, becomes something that makes my toes curl against the cold floor.
When we break apart, his eyes are darker than before, hungry, and his gaze falls to a spot on my neck, his finger barely touching it. “I hurt you.”
“You did a lot of things to me last night, but hurting me wasn’t one of them.”
“Promise me you’ll tell me…if I cross a line. I don’t want to hurt you.”
I brush a streak of flour from his forehead with my thumb, then let my fingers trail down the side of his face, tracing the scar I now know by heart.
“You’ll never hurt me,” I say. “Not my body, anyway.”
He bows his head, closing the distance until his lips graze the bruised skin with infinite care, his breath warm, his voice wrecked. “It’s only—” a kiss, “ever—” a gentle lick, “been you.”
Those words penetrate bone every time.
I let him press soft, reverent kisses up the slope of my neck, a heat gathering behind my ribs and radiating out to all the bruised, fragile parts of me. For all his violence, this is the side of Reth that unravels me the fastest, the infinite gentleness threaded beneath the threat. And for a second, I’m impossibly close to falling apart again.
When he finally pulls back, his closeness lingers—like a pressure, a warmth, an ambient charge that vibrates between us. He turns his attention back to the baking, and I instantly develop a love-hate relationship with apple-cinnamon muffins.
I hop onto the counter beside him, his shirt riding up my thighs, and I catch the way his gaze keeps drifting to my bare legs. I reach out and take his left hand in both of mine, turning it gently.
The tattoo across his knuckles. I noticed the new ink last night but filed it away for when we weren’t trying to fuck each other into a stupor.
“This is new,” I say, easing my fingertips over it. East. West. North. South. A shattered compass, glass fractured, needle broken—but the remaining piece points straight toward his ring finger.North.
“What does this mean?”
He stares down at our joined hands for a long moment before answering, “It’s a promise.”
“To who?” I wait.
“Myself.” Gaze catches mine. “And you.”
“Me? What promise?”
His throat works, and there’s a subtle shift in his shoulders, like a wall slowly creeping back up. I don’t want it to, so I don't push. Some things are said loudly enough in silence. I just hold his hand for a moment longer, then set it back down and watch him finish folding the batter.
“How many times have you made these?”
A pause. “Enough.”
“For me?”
He doesn't answer immediately. Transfers the batter to the tray in slow, even portions. “I made them before you knew I existed.”
The words land quietly. I sit with them—with the image of him in some other kitchen, in some other city, making the one thing he knows how to make for a woman who didn't know he was alive.
“Reth.”
“Mm.”
“That's the saddest, yet most romantic thing you've ever said to me.”
He slides the tray into the oven and closes the door and turns to look at me. Really look—the direct, unguarded version that I still don't entirely know what to do with even after everything.
“They're better now,” he says.
