Hayden stills, breath hot against my chest. “They aren’t…normally like this.”
I slide my hand up the back of his neck, my thumb brushing behind his ear. “I’m not complaining.”
Surprise breaks through the practiced control of his face.
And god, if that isn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
His shadows are bolder, wrapping my wrists, sliding over ribs and hips. They glide across my skin like water the moment it becomes a wave. Cold and warm, grounded and otherworldly. Disorienting, and oh so Hayden.
“They’re my echo,” he says, his breath hot at my neck, and fuck, the intimacy of it punches the breath right out of me. “You touch me, they answer.”
Every inch of my body is his playground now. Every shiver, every moan, every desperate grind amplified because with his shadows, he doesn’t needhishands to touch me everywhere at once.
I wrap a leg around his waist, dragging him closer, pressing my forehead against his. “Wait.”
He goes still instantly. Eyes dark, jaw tight. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, hand resting over his thrumming heart. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I just…before this goes any further, we should…”
His shadows pulse at my hips, like they’re waiting, too.
Hayden’s lips twitch. “The talk?”
“Yeah,” I say, fingertips tracing the dip of his spine. “The talk.”
He nods, all serious again. “Recently tested. You?”
“Same. And I’m on PrEP.”
“Me, too.”
I grin, letting my palm flatten against his ass. “Hades on PrEP is my Roman Empire. To be a fly on the wall at that appointment.”
He bites my lower lip gently, eyes flashing with amusement. “I take all my responsibilities seriously.”
Swoon.
“Broodyandresponsible? Are you trying to kill me?”
He smiles, but there’s something behind it. A flicker of honesty.
“Truth is, I don’t really get sick. Not like most people do. But I also don’t know how any of it would affect me. And I’ve been living long enough to know that just because I’m not exactly like everyone else doesn’t mean I get to ignore the rules.” Hayden exhales softly. “I may not age. I may not break easily. But I live here now. I don’t get to treat other people’s bodies as less than mine.”
He looks at me, steady and so certain.
“So, yeah. I get tested. I’m on PrEP. I take precautions.”
His admission cracks open my chest. It’s…intimacy. Ownership. More care than I was expecting from him. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me but it does: how much it turns me on when someone shows up with that kind of quiet responsibility.
“That,” I whisper, fingers tracing the edge of his jaw, “might be the hottest thing you’ve ever said.”
His face shifts, just a little. As if the words hit somewhere deeper than they should. So, I kiss him again, slower now. Not claiming. Not asking.
Just…savoring.
He kisses me back and his shadows move with us, against us, around us. When I push him down on the bed, they rise like smoke. His hands grip my shoulders. His breath hitches when I move lower, and when I take him into my mouth, they’re there, too. Extra hands holding me while he falls apart. He gasps, half wrecked, because he can feel them, too. Feel them curling under me, touching me where he can’t.
They coax me forward, guiding me gently but insistently, encouraging me to move so that my knees straddle his hips. His hands dig hard into my thighs and my hands press his chest, his heartbeat steady under my palms. Warm. Real. Mine.
