The corner of his mouth, the almost-smile, the one I’ve spent days trying not to react to appears.
“I’m not reading anything.”
“You absolutely are. Your entire face right now says you’re reading something.”
“My face says I’m waiting for you to tell me what you’re processing.”
“My face says that’s not your business.”
He tilts his head, a small motion that shifts his weight and closes the four inches between us to two, and the warmth of him is immediate, specific, and my body registers every inch of the change.
“Okay,” he says, quietly.
“Okay,” I say back, and neither of us moves away.
The fire breathes.
The darkness holds.
His eyes stay on mine, and a tension that feels instinctive and grounding is, instead, the specific tension of two things that have been moving toward each other very slowly for a very long time and are now close enough to feel the pull clearly.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“Terrible things,” I say honestly.
Something in his jaw shifts. “About?”
“About the fact that you’re two inches away from me and I’ve been extremely aware of it for the last hour… I don’t know what to do about that.”
His eyes drop to my mouth, briefly, the way they have a handful of times in the days we’ve been together. When they come back to mine, something in them has changed. The gold of them is darker. The careful management is slightly reduced.
“I’m aware of it too,” he says.
“Well….” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is either an achievement or a deception. “That’s a problem.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Because the last time we were this close in the dark—”
“I remember.”
“And we agreed—”
“We didn’t agree on anything,” he says. Not an argument, a correction. “We stopped because the cabin was full of other supernatural beings who would hear us. There’s a difference… and they’re not here to hear us anymore.”
I open my mouth to argue.
But I don’t get the words out.
He closes the distance between us, slow enough that I see it happening, feel it happening, that shift in the air as the last inches disappear. My body reacts before my thoughts can catch up, something low and instinctive, tightening, leaning into it instead of away.
I should stop this.
I don’t want to hurt him.
But I don’t.
His hand comes up, steady at my jaw like he already knows I’m not going to move.
