My eyes adjust instantly, drinking in the familiar lines of him as he closes the door to the bedroom behind us. The breadth of his shoulders, the steady patience in the way he turns back toward me, the subtle shift in his expression now that the outside world has been shut out.
There is something about the imbalance of perception that sends a complicated warmth through my chest. I can see him fully, every tension, every decision, every restrained instinct.
He sees me mostly by feel.
By memory.
By whatever it is that has been binding us together since the first night our paths crossed.
His hand lifts again, slower this time, brushing along my arm. He’s reacquainting himself with the shape of me in a space that feels more intimate for its shadows. The air between us changesas he steps closer, the quiet of the cabin pressing in until even the smallest movement feels amplified.
Outside, the forest continues its endless breathing.
Inside, something else begins to unfold.
I reach up and touch his jaw.
And he goes very still.
My fingers trace the line of it, the sharp angle of his jaw, the roughness at the edge. He watches me do it with an expression I’ve only seen fragments of before, the two centuries of managed control absent, just the man underneath and what it costs him to hold himself still under my hands.
“You’ve been so careful,” I say, softly. “With me.”
“Yes.” His voice is lower than usual.
“You don’t have to keep being careful.”
Something in his eyes shifts. The careful going out like a light. His hands find my waist, and the warmth of them through the fabric of my shirt is immediate. I make a sound that I don’t try to control. He pulls me into him with a certainty that is completely different from carefulness, as if he’s been holding this back for many days and has decided it’s time to stop.
His mouth finds my throat, and I tip my head back against his shoulder, and the sensitivity of this body, the vampire-sharp nerves that have been my nemesis for days, becomes something entirely different. Every point of contact registers at a depth no human body could manage. The warmth of his breath against my skin. The texture of his hands at my waist, moving upward. The steady drum of his heartbeat, close enough now that it doesn’t only reach my ears, it moves through me.
“You’re thinking,” he says against my jaw.
“I’m always thinking.”
“Stop!”
“Impossible, I have an extremely active…” he does something with his mouth against the curve of my neck that empties mymind completely, “… inner monologue,” I finish, somewhat after the fact, and grip his shirt in both hands.
He laughs. A real one, low and close against my skin, and the sound of it does what I knew it would do, what it’s been doing in fragments for weeks, it undoes something. I turn in his arms and press my mouth to the corner of his jaw where the sound was, feel the curve of his smile against my lips, and the warmth in my chest reaches a temperature I didn’t know it could.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says back. Gold eyes glimmering in the dark. Something in them I’ve been circling for days.
I lean up and kiss him, and something in his exhale, the small, controlled release of it, tells me he’s been waiting for me to do exactly this.
His hands slide under the hem of my shirt, palms flat against my ribs, and the contact, skin to skin, lands with an impact entirely disproportionate to the simplicity of it. The warmth of him floods through every point of contact at once, and I make a sound that I don’t try to moderate. His grip tightens in immediate response, fingers pressing into my sides as if the sound got somewhere past the controlled exterior.
“Off,” I tell him, pulling at his shirt. “Take it off.”
“Ask me nicely.”
“I could just rip it.”
“You could try.” The low note of challenge in his voice does absolutely nothing to help me think clearly.
“Three seconds,” he says. “I gave you three whole seconds.”
