“I don’t trustmyself.Not yet.”
“So…even now, you won’t…?” She took a step back, a vulnerable curve tightening around her mouth like she wasn’t sure if she should’ve spoken.
He frowned. Caught her hand, fingers threading through hers with quiet insistence, and guided her until she stood right in front of him. He drew her in, closing the distance between them.
He kissed her. A single brush of his lips against hers. Tentative. Tender.
When he pulled back, her eyes were still closed.
“Kailorien…” she breathed.
“Hmm?” He smiled, his voice husky.
He kissed her again. Longer this time. A fraction more certain. A fraction more lost.
When he drew back again, she opened her eyes—luminous, full of wonder.
“Kailorien,” she whispered again, her voice softening with a hint of shyness.
“What is it?” he asked, though he never let the words fully finish. His mouth found hers before she could answer. Urgent now. Fierce. This time, the kiss was deeper. Slower. As though the need he’d buried beneath command and restraint had started to melt, spilling up from places even he couldn’t reach.
She parted her lips with a sound that pierced his chest. Let him in, sighed as his tongue laved over hers. Her hand drifted up to his cheek. When he pulled himself back, breathing harder than before, she just stood there blinking, dazed.
“What…” Her voice trembled. “What wasthat?”
He leaned in again, pressing a lingering kiss against her forehead.
“Me,” he sighed, “surrendering.”
In that quiet space between them—still wrapped in steam, silence, and the faint smell of herbs—Resh finally understood why all the other kisses he’d ever experienced had never been enough.
They weren’thers.
“The Resh’Agar surrendering?” she teased. “To me?”
Her breath didn’t settle. Neither had his.
They hovered—forehead to forehead—held in that liminal hush between heartbeats, between choices, between whathadbeen and whatcouldbe.
Then, softly, she whispered, “Have you been thinking about doing that for a while?”
Without answering, he dipped his head and pressed a kiss to her sternum—right above her heart. Her breath caught, fingers twitching where they still laced with his. He kissed her lips again, slower now, deeper, as though savoring her response.
“Ever since the river,” he said. “I’ve thought about this since then.”
Another kiss.
And another. Then lower, tracing reverence across her chest—searing it into her velvet skin with lips and breath and longing. Not taking.Worshiping.
She gasped, her hands rising to his shoulders, hesitancy melting by the moment.
“That…long?”
He hummed, his fingers squeezing her waist, wrenching another gasp from her.
“Why—” she began, faltering when his mouth brushed just beside the swell of her breast, “why haven’t you done this before?”
He looked up at her then, dazed by the soft, languid swell of her lips. The flush on her cheeks. The way her damp hair curled against her neck.
