“You have it,” Silas tells me, his hand sliding from my lower back to my waist. He doesn’t pull me closer or claim any more of my attention. The movement is just to anchor, to sayI’m herewhile demanding nothing in return.
“I know.” A smile ghosts across my lips. “That’s the problem. Eventually, I’ll want more, or you’ll want more, or they’ll want more… And then what?”
He exhales softly, as if he understands exactly what I mean, even though I’m not sure how far the rhetorical question reaches.
We don’t try to answer it right now, opting to stay in this quiet, unrushed bubble where he watches me as I freely touch him.
I trace the lines of his ribs, memorize another faint scar, this one near his hip. His skin warms my fingertips, but the moment warms so much more.
This feels like a pause the universe didn’t mean to give me.
“Are you always this still?” I inquire, breaking the silence out of curiosity.
“Only with you.”
I don’t have a name for the feeling I get in my chest. But it’s fuzzy, like mold… And I’m not sure if I like it. I don’t hate it either, though.
A thought creeps into my mind, one that I know I’ll fight later, though I allow myself this moment to be weak enough to entertain it.
How long before this bubble pops?
How long before the Bay reminds us it doesn’t allow softness without payment?
I settle my head back against Silas, listening to the steady tick of his heartbeat. Strong. Oh-so real.
Mine.
“We won’t get another morning like this, will we?” I murmur, not wanting to speak it into existence. But the knowledge has to go somewhere else. It can’t keep bouncing around my head.
His fingers twitch against my waist. Just once, though it’s all I need to confirm he feels it too.
“No. Not for a while.”
Neither of us moves to do anything about it. Not yet.
He doesn’t tighten his hold. I don’t pull away. We just exist in the space between inevitability and want.
Because even if everything is about to go sideways…
Right now, he’s mine.
And I’m his.
Nothing outside of these four walls will change that.
