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“I said the shirt stays.”

“I know what you said.” His mouth is close. I can feel the shape of the words. “It’s dark. I can’t see you. I just want to feel you.”

I sit with it for a second. His hands are frozen at the edge of the fabric, and I know he’ll actually stop if I tell him to. That’s the part that undoes me, the fact he won’t be breaking my boundary if I deny him again.

But I realize he’s right. It’s too dark.

“Fine. Just—don’t you dare turn anything on,” I repeat for like the third time.

“I won’t.”

He peels the shirt up slowly. I think he knows he’s being allowed something no one else is. I lift my arms, and the fabric leaves my skin as the air hits every old mark I’ve spent years hiding, and I go rigid, waiting for him to flinch at the feel of them.

He doesn’t.

He just makes a low sound and kisses my mouth, then the hollow of my throat, and keeps going down.

I twitch. “Kento—”

“I’ve got you.” His voice is wrecked. “You’re okay.”

I’m not okay.

I’m naked from the waist up in his bed, scars and all, and he’s kissing down my body. Like the map of me is something he wanted. My fingers knot gently into his hair. I need the anchor. Without it, I might come apart.

“You’re shaking again,” he murmurs against my skin.

“If you say I’m scared, I’ll stab you.”

“I was going to say you’re beautiful.”

“O… oh.”

He huffs a laugh into my navel and keeps undressing us.

My pants go the rest of the way off. Underwear hooked and dragged down my thighs until there’s nothing left on me at all. I feel the last of it leave and have to stare at a ceiling I can’t see, because if I think too hard about being fully bare, I’ll bolt.

Then he sits back to strip himself. When he comes back, he’s all skin, and he settles over me again with nothing between us but the dark.

He kisses the center of my chest, right over my heartbeat.

I lie there naked under him, more seen than I’ve ever been with the lights off, and I don’t run.

Then his mouth leaves me, and I hear him spit into his palm. I tense before he even touches me again.

His other hand finds my wrist and pins it to the pillow to keep me from covering myself. “Stay open for me.”

“I’m not—”

His wet fingers slide between my legs and start rubbing, coating the tight furl of me until I can feel how slick I already am.

He kisses my throat. “That’s it, baby. Let me get you ready.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“What should I say?” One fingertip presses, circles, presses again. “Opening you? Softening you up so you can take my cock?”

I don’t get to answer, because he pushes in.