He entered her slowly, with a breath caught in his throat, like he was crossing a threshold he’d never return from.
Blair gasped, eyes fluttering shut, her hands gripping his shoulders as he sank into her, inch by aching inch.
They moved in silence.
No crafted moans, no whispered promises, just breathe, Heartbeat, and the creak of the bed frame as they rocked together in quiet surrender.
His forehead pressed to hers. Her legs wrapped around his waist.
Every thrust was a goodbye she couldn’t say out loud.
His mouth brushed her jaw, her shoulder, her ear. He whispered something between kisses, not in English, not in any language she knew.
But she felt it, in the way his voice trembled, and in the way his hands shook, like a vow.
Her orgasm rose slowly, like a tide against stone. When it broke, it was quiet, just a shudder, a gasp, a soft cry pressed into his neck. Her tears came then, too, silent and startling.
Ashar held her through it, still moving, still inside her, as if he stopped, she’d disappear.
When he came, it wasn’t a cry; it was breathless,devastated.
Final.
He kissed her like he was dying there, like a part of him already had.
Afterward, they lay tangled in sweat and shadow, skin to skin, bare in every way.
Ashar brushed her hair back with reverent fingers. Whispered her name like it meant more than anything he’d ever known.
Blair blinked away the tears she wasn’t ready to own.
“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” she whispered.
Ashar kissed her forehead, but he didn’t promise anything, because he knew he couldn’t.
Blair sat on the edge of the bed long after Ashar fell asleep, her body still humming from everything he’d given her. Her skin smelled like cinnamon and sex and something older. Her heart, traitorous thing, felt full in a way that terrified her.
Because she knew the end was coming.
And this? This was the part where people always left.
* * *
She pulled on the hoodie he’d worn the day before; it still smelled like him, and she padded into the living room where he lay sprawled across her couch, one arm over his head, bare chest rising and falling in steady rhythm.
He looked peaceful. Human, almost. Like he belonged in this life she’d spent years trying to make feel like hers.
Maybe that was the scariest part.
She knelt beside him, heart hammering like a curse she couldn’t take back.
“Ashar,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
His eyes opened instantly, lashes heavy, mouth soft. “Blair?”
“I need to do something,” she said, voice thin. “And I need you to let me.”
Ashar sat up slowly, sensing something had shifted. “What is it?”
