He moves like wildfire, pressing my back up against the door as he kisses me back with heat, with hunger, with something desperate. A month of unsaid words and buried emotions crash between us, all igniting at once. It’s not soft. It’s not careful.
Noa lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me over to the bed, never taking his lips from mine. We kick off our shoes, and our clothes fall away like ash, left in a discarded heap on the wood floor.
When I’m completely naked before him, he looks at me with something close to reverence before pushing me back onto the bed. Then he drops to his knees in front of me, grabbing me with a force that makes me gasp as he pulls me to the edge. He lifts one of my legs over his shoulder, pressing hot kisses to the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, licking, sucking, marking.
Then the other leg is braced on his opposite shoulder, and he looks up at me from between my thighs. The look he gives me is full of smoke and lust and possession as he slowly starts to use his tongue to spread me until he reaches that sensitive node. Slowly, torturously, drawing slow circles until he finds the spotthat makes me cry out. He nips at me, playful, wicked, and then dives in like a man starved.
Oh gods… I’ve missed him. This. Us.
The fire builds fast, too fast—I’m not ready for it—and I’m already unraveling, thread by thread, coming apart at the seams with his name on my lips.
“Please, Noa,” I pant.
He knows exactly what I’m asking for. He moves over me, eyes locked on mine. The heavy heat of him between my legs. And this time, there is no holding back. He pushes into me in one solid, hard thrust that knocks the air from my lungs. And gods, the feel of him. Unyielding. Filling me and stretching me to the very edge of what I can take. Our bodies perfectly aligned.
He sets a punishing rhythm—deep, relentless, consuming—our breath spiraling into ragged gasps.
He hooks one of my knees, bending it against my chest to hit an even deeper angle that makes both of us cry out. I shift upward, using the headboard for leverage as he drives into me again and again, each thrust sending sparks across my vision.
The sensation is overwhelming, and I try to anchor myself by gripping the fabric beneath me as the heat builds, trailing up my spine like a slow-burning fuse.
Each thrust steals the breath from my lungs like he’s reaching for something buried beneath my skin—where magick and memory blur, where want becomes something holy.
His grip tightens—a flicker of gold at his fingertips—steadying us both as we ride the edge together. His hands leave shivers of warmth in their wake as they glide over my back, my sides, a banked flame, waiting to ignite. My touch changes too: silken, cool, like water poured over fire, flowing over his skin in fluid temptation.
I kiss him again, and the air itself seems to respond, steamrising as the world around us blurs at the edges. He watches me like he’s about to come undone.
I reach out, letting my fingers skim his chest, leaving trails of water that drip down, only to evaporate with a hiss as the embers beneath his skin surge forward. He inhales sharply at the sensation, his hands gripping my waist—hot and grounding—as my magick curls around his like a wave wrapping flame.
Every inch where we touch becomes a recipe of alchemy: fire to water, pressure to release, destruction to rejuvenation. Unrelenting. Consuming.
It’s as if we’re suspended in the eye of a storm entirely of our own making, guided only by trust and desire.
We rise together to the crest of one final wave and come crashing down in a cloud of steam and cool mist—separate, yet utterly entwined.
When it ends, we are breathless. Spent. Completely wrecked in the most perfect way.
We lie there tangled together, only the sound of our slowing breaths echoing off the walls.
* * *
I pullon jeans from the drawer I once claimed as mine. My things are all still there. Perfectly in place. Untouched. Waiting.
“I love you,” he says from behind me.
I turn, smiling. The way he’s looking at me… like I might vanish. Like I’m something he dreamed and isn’t sure he deserves.
His eyes are full of unsaid things—regret, fear, prayers, hope.
And love. New and fragile.
“I love you too,” I whisper as I wrap my arms around his neck and he pulls me in by the waist. He cocks his head as he looks at me, as if trying to decipher the truth of my admission. So I kiss him. I kiss him like a promise, putting the truth of myfeelings into that kiss so that when I finally pull away, we’re both smiling.
But then a shadow flickers behind his eyes, and his smile falters, like a flame sputtering against the wind. “Cel… about that night?—”
The anguish in his voice cuts sharp, slicing between us like broken glass.
“Noa—”
