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“You wish to do this?”

“I…I would wish to remember something of you.” I hesitate.“I will wear the blindfold, if you wish.”

He is very still, and when he speaks, it’s halting.

“Very well,” he says.

I nod, my throat dry.

The blindfold lies on a small table near my bed. I gather it in my fingers, feeling his stare on me as I do so. I take a breath, and tie it on. Strangely, it feels like home: now that it is no longer my enemy, it has become like a friend. I know its dark and silken world.

“Why are you smiling?” he says, and immediately my smile disappears. My hands are hot; my skin tingles.

“I see nothing now. Will you take my hands?”

There is a hesitation, and the soft movement of fabric. I picture him lifting back his hood. I can hear him breathing.

“Very well,” he says again.

And then his hands fold over mine, and a surge rushes through me. I’m embarrassed by how hot my hands are, but I stop thinking about that as he leads them through the air and—gently, but to me it’s sudden as an explosion—places my palms against cool skin.

It’s like all my senses are fighting each other at once. Or like a brand-new sense, suddenly coming alive. The tips of my fingers are electric, a thousand points of sensation. It’s like lights going off behind my eyes. His hands guide mine over his face. His forehead, the downy hair of his eyebrows. The tender skin, impossibly tender, that marks the sockets of his eyes. I feel the sweep of his lashes as he blinks, and he moves my fingers down over his closed lids.

Am I breathing? I’m not sure.

I hadn’t expected him to trust me like this. My fingertips graze over his eyelids, feeling the tremor beneath, the slight flutter as though it’s an effort for him to keep them shut. My fingers brush the lashes again and travel down the slope of hisnose, and across to his cheekbones.

He is beautiful,the thought comes to me, as sure as the sky.

The thought is strange, yet not strange at all.

His hands tighten on mine, his fingers around my wrists, his thumbs in the center of my palms. I can hear his breath, and no doubt he hears mine.

My fingers inch down toward his mouth. I try not to let the least sound escape me. I feel the bow of his upper lip, that little pucker at the center, yielding beneath my finger. One finger traces to the corner of his mouth—am I imagining that it quivers?—and then back over the bottom lip, smooth and full. I feel his breath now, the movement of air against my exploring fingers.

And I don’t move, can’t move. I just breathe.

I should take my hands away, but I don’t.

And thenhishand is there, warm against the nape of my neck. Cradling the back of my head. Drawing me closer, inch by inch.

Until finally, his lips touch mine.

*

A shock runs the length of my body, rattling me like a bead. And yet inside the shock I am calm, weightless. I am the eye of the storm. My body is a raging wind, but in the center…in the center, there is a holy kind of emptiness. I feel a thread of heat rush from my throat and through each vein. The tips of my fingers pulse. The pit of my stomach contracts. Time warps, suspended. Nothing is real but this.

“Psyche,” he murmurs into my mouth, but my name is a word that lost all meaning a heartbeat ago.

His voice is a caress. A plea. A demand. I feel the shape of his jaw against mine as he draws back for a moment, taking air. Mylips are cold and empty without his.

It doesn’t matter that I cannot see him, I feel where he is the way I’d know a fire in the room. I reach out my hand and it finds the back of his head, the nape of his neck, the tendons there pressing strong against my hot palm.

I have hated him, I havewantedto hate him. But I cannot find these thoughts now, the things I thought he was. Whatever he is, it is not evil. I feel it in his breath, in how he touches me: with such desire, and yet with humility.

With such care.

His cheek grazes mine; one hand rests against the brooch that pins mychiton, and I feel him toying with the clasp, his teasing touch waiting for permission.