Alessandro stayed in the kitchen for a long time after she’d gone, not knowing how to fix things but determined to try. He washed the dishes. Wiped down the counters. Found a sponge and scrubbed at a stain that had been there since before he arrived. Stupid, useless gestures. But they were something.
Eventually, her crying stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse.
Chapter Seventeen
That night, Marina reached for Alessandro.
She didn’t plan it, didn’t think it through. She crossed the living room where he sat on the couch, laptop forgotten, staring at nothing, and pressed herself against him like proximity could fix what words had broken.
He kissed her like a drowning man, desperate and grateful and a little terrified of being thrown a rope.
She climbed into his lap, deepening the kiss like she could solve something with proximity. The laptop slid off the couch. Neither of them reached for it.
He kissed her back immediately. Desperate and grateful and wrong, wrong in a way she could feel but couldn’t name yet. His hands went to her hair, her waist, pulling her closer like the distance between them was a problem physics could fix.
She didn’t want to talk. Talking meant the hollow space. Talking meant acknowledging that she’d dampened the bond three days ago and hadn’t opened it back up and he’d noticed and hadn’t said anything and neither of them was going first.
His shirt came off. She pulled her own over her head without ceremony, without the slow undressing that used to make thisfeel like a conversation. This wasn’t a conversation. This was an attempt.
His hands found her skin and they were shaking. Not with desire. With relief. She felt the difference and wished she hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed against her neck. “God, Marina, I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t.” She kissed him to stop the words. The apology made it worse. The apology was about him, about his guilt, about making himself feel better, and she didn’t have the energy to explain why that was the problem and not the solution. “Just don’t talk.”
He obeyed. Carried her to the bedroom they’d been occupying like polite strangers for three days. The bed was made with rigid, anxious neatness, his doing, another form of trying, of showing her he could be good, be careful, be whatever she needed. She didn’t want careful. She didn’t know what she wanted.
She wanted to feel close to him again. That was the whole of it. The wanting was simple. The execution was not.
He laid her down and covered her body with his, lean muscle and dragon-heat, and she reached for the place inside her where the bond lived.
She reached and found the wall she’d built.
Three days of dampening had made it solid. She pressed against it and felt nothing. His emotions, his physical responses, all of it muffled. Like pressing her ear to a door and hearing only her own breathing.
She could open it. She knew that. One conscious choice and the bond would flood back and she’d feel everything he felt and he’d feel everything she felt, and…
She couldn’t. Because what she felt right now was hollow. And if he felt that, it would destroy him. And she wasn’t trying to destroy him. She was trying to find her way back.
His hands tightened on her hips. His mouth found hers with renewed urgency, harder, like intensity could substitute for intimacy. She recognized the strategy because it was the same one she was using.
They undressed each other quickly. No exploration. No pausing to learn or rediscover. Just fabric removed, obstacles cleared, two people trying to get to something that might not be there anymore.
The sheets were cold. She noticed that. Usually his body heat warmed everything within minutes (dragon thermoregulation, the constant furnace of him). Tonight he was still hot to the touch, but the sheets stayed cold against her back. She couldn’t tell if it was real or if she was just more aware of the places he wasn’t.
When he pushed inside her, they both gasped. The physical sensation was still there, precise, undeniable. He still fit her perfectly. Her body still responded, still wanted him, still arched into the feeling of him filling her.
But without the bond amplifying everything, it was just sex. Good sex. Technical, attentive sex with a man who had memorized what she liked and was applying that knowledge with careful diligence.
She hated that word. Diligence.
“Marina.” Her name in his voice, strained and searching. “I can’t feel you. I can’t…”
“I know.” She pulled him down into a kiss to stop him from saying more. His confusion pressed faintly against the wall she’d built, not gone, just muted. He didn’t understand. She’d reached for him. She’d started this. And now she was here with him, skin to skin, and still somehow miles away.
“Just move,” she said. “Please.”
He did. Set a rhythm that was harder than the way they usually did this, more desperate. She recognized what he wasdoing: trying to be so physically present that it would break through the emotional distance. Each thrust deliberate, pointed, like he could reach her if he just pushed hard enough.
