The moment stretched, his lashes lowered when his lips touched mine, and my whole body tipped toward him as if a lost part of me had finally found where it belonged.
Everything after that blurred into heat and motion. Closeness that rewires a person. That teaches you what safety feelslike. And when his warm hand gripped my shaft, I choked and leaned into his touch like gravity had found me again.
I had the wild thought that I’d never known anything so gentle could undo me so completely.
His gaze lifted, searching, as if he already knew the answer but needed to hear it anyway. “Tell me you want this too.”
I answered with sound, not words. Words felt insignificant and fragile. Like saying them out loud might break whatever this was before it had the chance to become real.
Then his lips were on mine, warm and hungry, and the world fractured into light. Everything splintered into heat and sensation.
Adrian stroked me until I was on the verge of begging for release. Then he laid me back and crawled over me, starting at my mouth and working his way down my body one slow, agonizing kiss at a time. When his tongue slid over my swollen tip, the pleading sounds became words. I choked on an inhale. My body reacted before my mind could catch up—every nerve lit, every thought scattering into something softer, less coherent. I didn’t recognize myself like this. Didn’t want to.
Again, he brought me to the edge of release, only to let me crash. His warm, wet mouth became the center of my universe, where breath and life and time ceased to exist. Only pleasure and the grounding weight of his touch and his scent.
He raised his eyes to mine, and I read his unspoken question. I answered without hesitation. For the first time in my life, I said, “Yes. I’m ready.”
The words hung between us for half a second—fragile, irreversible—changing everything.
Adrian moved swiftly. His hand slid into mine, fingers threading tight, grounding me there—no room to disappear, no room to doubt. What had started as nerves turned to warmth, to trust, to something bright and consuming that felt like falling and flying all at once.
I didn’t know my body could hold that kind of feeling until he brought it to life.
After that, I couldn’t speak. Not because I didn’t have words, but because none of them felt big enough to hold what had just happened. I just held on—breath heaving, body singing—afraid that if I loosened my grip, the moment might slip away. The room cooled, the air damp against my skin. The world narrowed to us, to warmth and heartbeat and the quiet between.
The wordsI love youhovered sharp and bright, waiting. I said nothing, just pressed closer, letting the quiet hold it for me. Rain whispered at the window. His arm draped over me, heavy, protective, fingers tracing idle patterns on my skin.
And in that stillness, I understood—I was already his.
The image began to waver, edges softening, colors bleeding into one another. I felt it slipping, like sand through my fingers. The warmth of his skin, his scent mixed with the smell of sex, the quiet sound of our breathing tangled together—each detail dimmed, piece by piece.
“No,” I screamed silently. I tried to hold on, to anchor myself in that moment. The way he’d looked at me like I was something worth keeping, the way I’d believed him. I reached for him—actually reached—but my hands closed on nothing. Mybreath hitched, sharp and wrong, as if I’d surfaced too fast. My body hadn’t realized yet that the moment was over.
But the reel didn’t care. It kept spinning forward, pulling him from my grasp. His face was the last thing to fade, and I clung to it until there was nothing left but the echo of his heartbeat and the hollow ache of wanting it back. And the worst part was knowing I hadn’t realized, back then, that I should’ve held on tighter.
The image bled into a fleeting montage of nights and mornings tangled together—sheets twisted around our legs, skin slick with sweat, the murmur of his laugh against my neck. Some nights were quick and heady, urgency burning through us like a fuse. Others stretched long and tender, the world shrinking to nothing but the sound of our breathing and the rhythm of our hearts.
We thought we had time. That was the lie buried underneath.
His touch was never enough—and somehow always everything. I craved him the way lungs crave air, not just for pleasure, but for survival. Every kiss, every sigh, every whispered “stay” stitched itself into my skin until the line between us blurred beyond recognition. Until no version of my life didn’t begin and end with him.
Chapter 6
The Fourth Minute
ELI
The glow brightened again, washing the darkness in soft amber. When it settled, I stood in front of a mirror, tugging at the collar of my graduation gown. The cheap fabric scratched at my neck, and my reflection looked both proud and terrified.
Behind me, the room buzzed—camera flashes popping, voices overlapping in bursts of laughter and congratulations. My mother’s eyes shone wet, her hands fluttering like she couldn’t decide whether to fix my hair or just hold me. My father clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me stumble, pride written all over his face, even if he didn’t say the words. Friends shouted my name from across the room, waving their phones, calling out jokes about how I’d finally escaped.
And then Adrian appeared behind me, calm amid the chaos, adjusting the fold of my gown with surgeon-like precision. I caught his scent—soap, caffeine, and that faint chemicaltang of the hospital that never quite left him—and every live wire inside me settled.
“You look like a lawyer already,” he murmured against my ear.
“I’m a paralegal,” I said, trying for dry, but my grin gave me away.
He pressed a kiss just below my jaw. “Semantics.”
