Page 57 of Laced in Longing

Three steps across cold vinyl, and my bare feet carry me right into his space, into that pressure and heat, and my hands rise before I can talk them out of it. The sharp line of his jaw greets my fingers. My thumb brushes the corner of his mouth as his entire body tenses beneath my touch. A smile threatens to appear.

Instead, I tug him down.

For one terrible half-second, I brace for nothing, for an illusion and the disappointment of kissing a ghost through a veil my brain won’t let me see past⁠—

But then his mouth is on mine.

His lips. Full and soft and searing, exactly the shape I traced on that rooftop with shaking fingers, and a sound escapes me that I don’t recognize. It’s relief and desperation tangled together. He tastes like nothing I can name—like chilly air when you’re hot and sweaty. Or the ache in your chest when a song reminds you of something you can’t quite remember.

He goes still against me. Just for a beat. Like he can’t believe this is happening either.

Then his arms lock around my waist and…he takes.

The kiss turns molten, all restraint burning away. I melt into him as he walks me backward until my spine meets the wall. His hands are everywhere—cradling my skull, dragging down my throat, spanning my ribs like he’s trying to memorize the exact dimensions of me. Millennia, he said. Eternity of watching and never touching, and I feel every one of them in the way he kisses me like he’s starving.

My fingers curl into the lapels of his coat. I don’t ever want to let go.

Then he tears his mouth from mine.

We’re both breathing hard, chests heaving, and I nearly whine at the loss. His forehead drops to mine as hands frame my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting.

“Maven.” Just my name. Then, rougher, “You need to understand what this is.”

My voice catches when I attempt to reply; I clear my throat and try again. “I called you here. I know what I’m⁠—”

“No, you don’t.” His thumb presses gently against my lip, silencing me—there’s a distinct tremor in it. He’s not as composed as he wants me to believe. “I do not know how to want you gently, Maven…your soul was promised to me, but I didn’t need a promise to crave you. I would have found you across a thousand more lifetimes, torn through every world, and bled the universe dry just to taste the whisper of your name on my tongue.” He sucks in a shaky breath. “If I do this—if I let myself have you the way I’ve craved—there is no undoing it. You will belong to me. Wholly. In every way that matters, and a great many that you cannot yet imagine. I will never let you go.”

The knot in my stomach tightens, but it isn’t fear. Or—it is, a little. But it’s the good kind. I think.

“I’ve belonged to you for a long time, apparently.” I try for dry, but it comes out breathless. “Bit late for a warning label.”

He doesn’t laugh. His hands tighten on my face, and when he speaks, his voice drops so low I feel it in my sternum more than hear it. “I need the words, flower. I have waited too long and wanted so badly to have you. So say it. Tell me you want this, that you know what you are choosing, and I will spend the rest of eternity worshiping the choice.”

My eyes flood simply because he’s asking. The terrifying god who could take whatever he wants stands before me, shaking as he awaits my permission, when not a single person in my whole life ever bothered to ask if I wanted anything at all. Dr. Voss doesn’t count—I pay her to do that.

Something dark in my chest cracks open, and instead of the empty ache that usually lives there, warmth pours out.

“I want this.” I press the words against his mouth, relishing the shape of his lips under mine. “I want you. I don’t care what it costs. I’ve got nothing left to lose anyway.”

A shudder rolls through his whole frame, and the sound he makes—low, reverent—is one I’ll carry with me forever.

“You have everything to gain,” he corrects, and then he’s kissing me again, deeper this time, unhurried, like now that he knows I’m his he can afford to take his time.

Large hands slide down my sides, tracing the silk, and when he reaches the hem, he pauses. Not from hesitation—his need thrums in the air between us, thick enough to choke on—but as if he wants me to know he’s savoring it.

“Do you have any idea,” he murmurs against my throat, dragging his mouth along the line of my jaw, “how long I have dreamed of this? Of the sounds you would make? The way you would feel beneath my hands…” His teeth graze the tender spot below my ear, and my knees nearly give out. “Every inch of you is a gift I never thought I’d receive.”

“You’re going to talk me to death before we even—” My words dissolve into a gasp as his palm slides up the outside of my thigh to push the silk higher.

He smiles against my neck. “There she is.”

Heat licks up from wherever he touches, and every nerve I’ve spent years numbing with medications and dissociation lights up like the entire city grid at once. I’m shuddering, but not from panic. This is different. This is what it is to be alive.

His fingers find the strap of my gown and ease it down my shoulder, following the movement with his mouth, pressing a kiss to the bare skin. Then the other side. He’s so careful, so adoring, and when the silk finally slips down my body to pool at my feet, I don’t feel the urge to cover myself.

I let him look, scars and all. I’ve never been ashamed of them or sought to hide them, but in this moment? I’m almost proud to have them with the way he admires me.

And when his breath catches—when this composed, ancient being becomes utterly undone at the sight of me—I understand, for the first time in my entire existence, genuine desire. He wants me.