I lean back, giving enough space for her to watch. I want her to see what she does to me, what I become in her hands. If only she could see herself the way I do, her lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes dark with desire. I wish she could feel what I feel, how she surrounds me, drags me under with every sound that leaves her mouth, every motion making me hers alone. All I can think is how she makes aggression look gentle, how she makes surrender feel like flight.
There’s no question in her touch, no apology in mine. Only two people learning the same hymn by heart. Her pace quickens, moans rising as I cup her breasts in my hands, neither of us able to slow ourneed for the other. When she finally leads us over the edge, through that shared escape from the underworld into something bright and infinite, I run my hands along her back, easing her down into me, rising to meet her in the final rush.
Words fail. All that remains are the sounds caught in my throat, the tremor that now moves through both of us. I feel her hair spill across my face, her shoulders relax into my arms, her heart beating wild against mine. My body shakes involuntarily with every tiny stutter she makes, taking the last of me with her. I never want it to end, but eventually it gentles into stillness. When I finally find my voice again, the words come soft, almost prayerful, an offering.
“You’re more than I deserve.” She looks up at me, flushed and shaking, her eyes unfocused but luminous. I stroke her hair, my voice steadying. “More than I ever thought I’d find.”
She presses her head to my chest and I kiss the crown of her hair. We lie there in silence, undone and breathing softly, until the chill finally wins and forces us up, to shower, to warmth, to do it all over again and again, until our bodies ache in tenderness and our eyes flutter shut from exhaustion.
Chapter 50
Aqua Regia
When sleep finally takes him, I stay awake, listening to the small, uneven rhythm of his breathing. His bedroom wraps us in the scent of warmth, skin, lavender and rain, of everything that can’t be named but lingers anyway. The piano stands silent in the other room, a witness to what we gave tonight. His arm lies weighted around my waist, hand pressed against my back, holding me in a way that feels both protective and raw.
I trace the faint lines on his chest, the rise and fall beneath my palm, the heartbeat that feels almost fragile after everything it’s survived. It’s strange, the kind of stillness that follows something like this, full of so much. Like the world has changed shape to make room for what we’ve become.
He’s always looked untouchable on stage, all fire and distance, every motion designed to keep the world at bay. But here, in this quiet, he looks fragile. Beautifully,terriblyhuman. I think that’s what touches me most, not the power or the surrender, but the honesty. The way he gaveall of himselfand trusted me to hold it. I brush a strand of hair from his forehead and whisper something that probably doesn’t reach him, but I say it anyway. “You don’t even know what you mean to me.”
His lips twitch faintly, like maybe he heard, or maybe he’s dreaming. I don’t move. I don’t want to break the spell. The world outsidewill find us again soon enough, the noise, the band, the distance, the stage lights, but for now there’s only this. The weight of him beside me. The warmth that still hasn’t faded. The knowing that something pure and boundless just began, and neither of us will ever be the same again.
After that night, we're never apart. Every evening folds into the next and sleep becomes the only time I resent being human. Some nights we actually sleep, limbs tangled, skin against skin, hearts syncing into the same rhythm. Other nights we don’t even try. Half the time my body feels like it’s floating, aching, exhausted, blissed beyond reason. Every muscle stretched and eased beneath his hands, every breath part of some language we’ve invented between kisses.
Now that we're not holding back anymore, every fantasy I’ve ever had stares me right in the eyes and smiles back.I can’t believe he’s real.I can’t believe he’smine. Every morning is like being torn away, we pout like a pair of melodramatic teenagers, but it’s true, it feels unbearable. The days are just placeholders between the hours we can touch again. Our messages run from filthy promises to sleepy confessions about how we miss the sound of each other breathing.
Sometimes I wake to him snoring softly beside me, and it’s the most ordinary, perfect sound in the world. It makes something inside me bloom, something so private and wonderful I can’t even name it. He gives me a key one morning, casual as anything but to me it feels like being handed a whole world.
We try to be decent adults and go on actual dates, leaving the cocoon of blankets and music occasionally. At a museum, I stop in front of a sculpture of Persephone, her marble hands poised mid-escape, face half-turned toward the dark.
“She looks like she’s choosing,” I say. “Not running.”
“She was,” Rafe answers. “That’s the part everyone misses. She didn’t just eat the pomegranate, shebit into it.Willingly.Knowingwhat it meant.”
I glance at him, curious. “You think that’sromantic?”
He studies the statue, voice low. “I think it’s human. She saw him and recognized something that matched her hunger,her bite. There’s love in that. There has to be.”
For a long moment, the world goes silent. Just us, the echo of footsteps, the statue between us like a mirror. Later, we stop by a little shop and buy a thin chain for my pomegranate charm. When he fastens it around my neck at his place, he grins like he forged it himself. I kiss him, but the thought creeps in,time is running out. The European tour looms closer. My face must give me away because his smile fades.
“Hey.” He catches my hand, his thumb tracing the edge of my wrist. “Hey,listen. We have right now, okay? When we’re on tour, I’mnotgoing to disappear. I know you don’t have a reason to believe me yet, but give me a chance first, yeah?”
“Idobelieve you,” I say. “It’s just… after that.The album.Back to L.A.”
He shakes his head, a smile returning. “L.A.’s annoying, but it’seasy.You can come down for the weekend, or I can fly up to Seattle. It’s just the tour. That’s all we have to get through.”
Then his tone changes, serious, grounded and fierce. He cups my face in both hands and looks at me like he’s trying to feed his thoughts directly into my mind.
“I’m not letting some fuckingseven week tourget in the way ofthis. Not us,not you.Not ever. It's seven weeks, that's nothing. You went to school forfifteen years. We got this.”
And when he kisses me, it’s slow and deep enough to steal every bit of air from my lungs and every ounce of doubt from my heart.
A few weeks later, we end up in a record shop downtown, the kind that’s coated in dust and the musk of vinyl sleeves permeates the air, with handwritten labels in crooked penmanship and a bell that jingles every time someone comes in. Rafe moves through the aisles like he’s in church. His fingers brush along the spines as if each one holds the answer to the meaning of life.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out a sleeve with a faded black-and-white cover. “Pop quiz. Do you know this one?”
I tilt my head. “Looks like a band that smells like cigarettes and heartbreak. Eighties?”
He grins. “Nineties. Post-punk revival. They only released one album, broke up mid-tour.”
