Page 60 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Despite feeling boneless and undone, every muscle still quivering from my release, I kept moving.

I rode the edge of that afterglow, hips rolling in a steady rhythm, my palms splayed against his chest to anchor me.

His heartbeat thundered beneath my hands, matching the rush still echoing in my own veins.

The pendant swung slightly between us, catching the light, and he reached up and cradled it in his palm, as if it had a role in this act between us.

I felt the shift in him, the subtle hitch in his breath, the way his rhythm faltered just slightly—his tell. I’d come to know it, to anticipate it. The moment before he gave in.

He let the pendant go, and both hands came to my hips, gripping tight, grounding us both.

He thrust up into me with raw urgency, his hips lifting off the bed to meet mine, pushing me down harder, deeper.

I gasped as he cried out beneath me, the sound low and rough, torn from someplace buried.

His head tilted back, lips parted, but his eyes were still locked on mine as he surrendered to his release, and I drank in every detail—his voice, the tension in his arms, the way his body arched into mine as if it was the only place he belonged.

I wanted to burn that moment into memory.

Not just the look on his face or the feel of him pulsing inside me—but the truth of it.

That something had passed between us that was more than want, more than pleasure.

It was a connection I’d never felt and didn’t expect to feel again.

Whatever happened after this, I would carry this with me. Always.

I collapsed onto his chest, our bodies still tangled, my skin damp from the shared exertion.

He wrapped his arms around me without hesitation, one hand stroking slowly up and down my back, the other holding me close.

We laid like that for a long while, the rhythm of our hearts and breathing gradually syncing, slowing, returning to something like peace.

His lips brushed against my hair now and then—soft, tender kisses that seemed to say this matters too .

This quiet after, this stillness between us—it was just as sacred as everything that came before.

Eventually, he shifted beneath me and sat up, and I followed, reluctantly pulling myself upright.

“Let me take that off you…” he murmured, his fingers reaching behind my neck to unclasp the necklace.

I lifted my hair for him, and he removed it with care, catching the pendant in his hand as it fell forward.

He paused, cupping it in his palm as if weighing it—its meaning, its memory.

Then, with a tenderness that undid me all over again, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it once more, a final seal, before rising from the bed.

He crossed the room in silence, placed the necklace gently back into its leather case, and then tucked it into my tote as if returning a relic to its resting place.

When he came back to the bed, he slid in beside me, stacking pillows behind him, and laid back, his body a familiar fortress I sank into without hesitation.

I curled into the space he always made for me, under his arm, my head resting against his chest. Neither of us spoke.

We didn’t need to. We simply breathed together, wrapped in the warmth and quiet of what we’d reclaimed.

We made love again, and then again, as if repetition could stretch time, could anchor us in this quiet cocoon where nothing else could intrude, but before we finally drifted off, he made a request.

“Mira,” his voice low, breath soft against my forehead. “I hope you’ll wear it— the necklace.”

“It’s not very practical,” I said with a small laugh. “I can’t imagine finding an occasion to wear it—where I’d need something that special.”

Baird made a soft sound of disapproval, that familiar rumble in his chest. “Nonsense,” he said, gently but firmly. “I hope ye wear it every day. And think about yer time with me—the parts that were good. I want ye to remember only that.”

His words wrapped around me like a security blanket, and for a moment, I let myself believe it could be that simple.

I thought back over everything—every wild, tangled moment since I’d arrived in Scotland.

The fear, the uncertainty, the things I’d learned about the world and myself that I could never unlearn.

But when I tried to hold on to the bad, it slipped through my fingers, dull and distant, already softening at the edges.

What shimmered instead were the bright pieces: the laughter, the way Baird looked at me, the touch of his fingers on my skin, the wicked smirk that completely undid me each and every time I saw it, and the sound of my name when he said it.

Somehow, impossibly, those moments outshone everything else.

The only darkness that lingered, sharp and immovable, was the one still ahead—the day after tomorrow, when I’d leave Baird.

Leave Scotland. And the ache of it was already growing, solid and cold in my chest. Because no matter how many good memories I carried with me, I knew I had to leave this behind.