Page 119 of The Sin Binders Ascent

Even though my heart is a shrine built to seven names I refuse to forget.

He’s still here. And I’m still leaning into him like I’m forgetting how to stay upright on my own.

“Say something,” I whisper, not trusting my voice.

His gaze lifts from my mouth, slow, steady. When he meets my eyes, everything else fades. The moss-glow in the trees. The hush of the blood-warm river behind us. Even the ache in my chest.

“You want me to kiss you.”

It’s not a question.

I should lie. I should laugh and shove him away and say something cruel. But I don’t. I can’t.

Instead, I let the truth curl between us like smoke.

“I want to know if you feel it too.”

His hand moves to mine, fingers brushing lightly across my knuckles.

“Every time you breathe,” he says quietly.

I don’t kiss him. But gods, I want to.

Theo

I can taste it on her, salt, blood, want. It clings to her skin, rides the heat between us, threads through the air like static about to ignite. Her craving is loud, wild, fractured in all the right ways, the kind that doesn’t beg or plead but dares. She’s looking at me like she’s already imagined the way I’d feel pressed against her, inside her, dragging those soft sounds from her throat that no one else has heard. Not like I would.

And gods, I want to give her that. I want to feel her legs wrap around me, her nails score my back, her mouth open against mine, desperate and furious and soft at the same time. I want to sink into her until the world unravels around us, until she forgets every name but mine. I want to break her rhythm and rebuild it around the way she moans when I touch her just right.

But what she wants right now, that ache in her breath, the pulse I can feel through her wrist where my hand still lingers, it's not real. Not yet. It’s a fracture. A need to forget everything she's lost. Her family. Her home. The magic carved into her bones. The gods tore her apart and dropped her into rot, and now she’s reaching for the only warm thing left.

Me.

If I were who I used to be, I’d take it. I’d twist her open, ruin her with kindness or cruelty, whichever made her beg first, andleave her wrapped in regret so sweet she’d ache every time she remembered the shape of my name.

But she’s not like the others. And I’m not immune.

So I shift my weight, slowly, pulling my hand from hers like it burns. I don’t speak, I don’t make it dramatic. I just ease away from her body, just enough to break the current, to give her that space she didn’t ask for but will need when the flood recedes.

Her eyes snap to mine, confused, sharp. There’s hurt beneath it, unspoken but there, raw and messy and made of too many things at once.

She doesn’t say a word. Just watches me like she’s trying to read a language I haven’t taught her yet.

I lean forward, just enough to meet her gaze head-on, and I let her see the want in me. Not the hunger. The decision.

“This isn’t just a kiss,” I say, voice low, steady. “You know it. I know it. You let me touch you now, it won’t stop there. It won’t just be lips. It’ll be skin. Hands. Heat. It’ll be you forgetting why you ever loved anyone else.”

Her jaw flexes, but she doesn’t deny it. Her fingers twitch, like she’s fighting the urge to reach for me anyway, damn the consequences.

“I want you,” she says, quietly, almost angry with it. “Even if I shouldn’t.”

I nod once. “I know.”

Her cheeks are flushed, her mouth parted. She’s every sin I’ve ever swallowed and spit back up. And she’s scared, not of me, but of what I make her feel. That’s what makes this different.

She wasn’t supposed to want me.

And yet.