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His hands trail down my sides, shaping me with slow, sure strokes, like he’s learning me through touch the way I’ve had to learn everything since the accident.

When he reaches my hips, he hesitates, giving me space.

I step closer, and his breath shudders out of him.

He washes my lower back, my ribs, the dip of my waist. No rush. No assumption. Just care. Just admiration. Just Jason, touching me like I’m something he never wants to mishandle.

He leans in, forehead resting against mine, water running between us. “Violet…”

I slide my hands up his chest, feeling his heartbeat thrum under my palms.

“I don’t want slow,” I whisper. “I want you.”

His groan is soft and devastating.

He kisses me deeper this time, molten, hungry, the kind of heat that steals breath and sense and every coherent thought I ever had. Like he’s memorizing me. Claiming nothing, but wanting everything.

The steam wraps around us in slow, ghostly curls, softening the world until it’s just the silky slide of water down skin. The shower becomes a cocoon, the outside world dissolving until all that remains is fog and heartbeats and the press of his mouth against mine.

My fingers slip over the wet planes of his shoulders, and my core tightens with desire. I feel unsteady in the best way. Like my body has known this long before my mind caught up. Like I’ve been waiting to be touched like this, seen like this, wanted like this… and hadn’t realized how empty I’d been until he filled the space.

His hands bracket my waist, guiding me without crowding me, like he already knows how to speak to my body before I even form a thought. Every small shift of his fingers sends a new pulse of heat through me, and I lean into him because being upright suddenly feels impossible.

My breath stutters against his lips.

God. I didn’t know I could feel like this.

Didn’t know I’d ever let myself.

The water pours over us in a hot, steady rush, and the sound seems to disappear under the thrum of my pulse. The whole world narrows to sensation, taste, heat, pressure until I’m not sure where I end and he begins.

For the first time in a year, maybe longer, I don’t feel broken or careful or fragile.

I just feel alive.

I try to press closer and slip on the wet tile.

“Oof—”

We collide, foreheads bumping with a wet smack.

“Ow, sorry,” I hiss, laughing through the sting. “Romance is alive and well.”

Jason snorts, rubbing my forehead gently. “We’re a danger to ourselves.”

“We? You dropped me earlier.”

“Technicality.”

Then he kisses me again, and everything goes liquid.

His hands skim down my sides, slick with water, steady even when I wobble again and accidentally knee his thigh.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he breathes, laughing into my mouth.

“Only a little.”

He presses closer, guiding me carefully now, until my back meets the warm shower tiles. His hands slide around my waist, anchoring me, worshipping me without words.