That slams into my chest like a freight train. I feel it everywhere. My breath leaves me in one sharp exhale.
I want to kiss her. Want to curl around her and pretend I know how to keep something without breaking it. But I don’t move.
I just sit there, watching her with the kind of hunger that’s not just about sex. The kind that says please let me keep this. Please let me try.
I swear I see something in her eyes I’ve never seen in anyone’s before.
She wants all of me.
Even the parts that scare me.
She shifts toward me, curling into my side, choosing me, even now. Even knowing I’m a mess. Still one cracked nerve away from doing something stupid.
I let her.
She smells like sweat and sex. Chaos and something terrifyingly safe.
I could get drunk off it.
I think I already am.
I wrap one arm around her shoulders and hold her like I care.
Because I do.
Even if I have no fucking idea what to do with that yet.
She’s soft against me. Warm. Quiet in that way that’s not silence but aftermath. The kind that says I feel safe here.
That wrecks me more than anything.
I drag the sheet up to cover her. Like that’s gonna fix anything. Like one strip of fabric erases the way she gaspedwhen I split her open, glove still wet with spit. My hand shakes trying to smooth it over her hip. Fucking pathetic.
Delilah doesn’t miss it.
“Y’know,” she says lazily, “you can touch me without acting like you’re defusing a bomb.”
“Can I?” My voice is shot. “Because that’s what this is, Delilah. Like holding a grenade I already pulled the pin on. Just waiting for it to explode.”
She turns her head, cheek to my chest. Her voice is quieter now. “Maybe it will. But I’m not glass, Jett.”
I hold her tighter. Not rough. But possessive. Enough to feel her heartbeat sync to mine, or maybe mine syncs to hers. I don’t fucking know anymore.
“I should leave.”
“You won’t.”
And fuck me, she’s right.
I should. I should get the hell up, let her sleep, run a few miles until I stop wanting to carve my initials into her skin just so everyone knows she’s mine. But I don’t move.
“You don’t make this easy,” I say into her hair.
“You don’t want easy.”
She says it like she knows me. Like she sees everything.
I glance down at her, catch the flutter of her lashes against my skin. “No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
