The space between us changes. Every second stretching just enough to register the heat of him, the focus of him, the fact that this is happening because he’s choosing it.
Because I’m letting him.
His mouth collides with mine. It hits like a spark catching, heat and pressure building instantly. His mouth moves against my lips with a rough certainty, less measured now, more instinct than control.
It sinks in.
The warmth of him, the weight of it, and the way he doesn’t rush, doesn’t take more than I give, but doesn’t retreat either.
My hand finds his chest without thinking, grounding myself against something solid, and that small contact shifts again, the pull tightening, deepening, turning into something harder to ignore.
I breathe him in.
And then I kiss him back.
I feel it deep in my chest before I feel it anywhere else, a warmth that travels outward from the point of contact in all directions at once.
My fingers clench against the fabric of his shirt.
Not to push, but to hold.
His hands find my face, both of them, framing me with a gentleness that is somehow more undoing than the grip in the clearing, thumbs tracing the line of my jaw. He kisses me the way he does everything else, thoroughly, unhurried, completely committed, and I fall into it.
When we pull apart, the air between us is warm.
His forehead drops to mine.
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
“Still terrible?” he murmurs.
“Catastrophically terrible,” I confirm, breath catching somewhere between laughter and surrender. “Worst idea. Absolutely the wrong choice. Zero stars. Do not recommend.”
“Mmm…”
“We should absolutely stop.”
“We should,” he agrees, and then proves with quiet conviction that neither of us has any intention of doing so.
This is nothing like the clearing. That had been chaos given form, the taste of his blood on my teeth, the crash of both of us hitting the tree, the knot locking us together before I’d even understood what was happening. Desperation with teeth. Hunger and fury and the violent collision of everything we had been holding back finally broke through restraint.
This… this feels different.
Slower, more deliberate, like something that has been gathering shape in the dark for weeks and is now stepping forward.
His hand finds mine first, and the contact is warm and grounding, his thumb brushing across my knuckles in a way that feels almost absentminded, if not for the tension humming beneath his skin.
The porch boards creak softly under our combined weight as he leads me toward the door, the night air cooling the heat left behind by his mouth. The shift from open forest to enclosed space happens gradually, the scent of pine and frost giving way to smoke and worn timber as he pushes the door open with his shoulder.
Inside, the cabin holds the last breath of the fire.
Embers glow low in the hearth, casting slow-moving orange shadows that stretch and contract across the floor and walls. The darkness is thick but not absolute, alive with flickering light that makes every movement feel more intentional, more exposed.
He doesn’t reach for a lamp.
He doesn’t need to.
Neither do I.
