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“Let me take care of my mess,” he says before disappearing into the bathroom.
I lie back, feeling every beat of my heart like a soft drum against the inside of my ribcage.
He returns with a damp washcloth, crouching beside the bed. I sit up and he presses the cloth to my skin, wiping sweat from my neck, my arms, my thighs.
I think he’s going to clean the mess from between my legs. His hand trials down my stomach in a way that makes me full-body shudder. But when he gets there, he tosses the washcloth to the side. Doesn’t wipe anything away.
He dips two fingers in his come that’s leaking out of me, and works it back inside.
I try to swallow and can’t, heat flaring all over again. He watches my reaction closely, eyes heavy-lidded and dark with something that feels a lot like pride.
“You are so beautiful and so perfect, Lila. There’s no part of me I wouldn’t give you,” he murmurs. “Do you like being full of me?”
I nod, groan at the slide of his fingers when he pulls them out, pushes them back in again.
He kisses the inside of my thigh. “God, you’re so fucking pretty. I could keep you like this.”
When I shiver, he tugs the blanket up over my shoulders and climbs in beside me again, pulling me gently into the curve of his body.
“I meant it,” I say once I’m settled. “What I said. I’m yours. I have been for a long time. It just took me a while to finally admit it to myself.”
He swallows, and for the first time since I’ve met him, he looks a little overwhelmed. “You have no idea what that does to me.”
My lungs feel too full. “I think I do.”
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and kisses my temple. “You did so good,” he praises. “I just… I want you to always feel safe with me. Especially after. No regrets.”
“I do,” I whisper. “With you, I do.”
His eyes darken. “Good. Such a good girl for me. You are everything.” He says each sentence between kisses.
It wrecks me a little. The praise. The heat behind it. The way it settles low in my belly and spreads like wildfire.
Maybe it’s the way his words land between us like they’ve always belonged there. But suddenly I can feel it—feel us—in a way I haven’t let myself before now.
The evidence has been there all along.
In every glance that lingered too long. Every charged silence. Every time he looked at me like I was already his and just... didn’t say it.
It was in the way we argued. The way we worked. The way we touched. It always meant something.
It’s not just lust. It’s not just timing.
It’s us.
Undeniable.
Traceable.
Proof that this isn’t some sudden combustion. It’s been building.
Locard’s Exchange Principle.
It’s one of the first things you learn when studying how offenders interact with environments.
It’s the framework everything else is built on. It means that whenever two objects come into contact, there’s a transfer. Always. No matter how small or fleeting or careful someone tries to be. Something gets left behind.
A fiber. A fingerprint. A fleck of dirt.
