Page 105 of Our Darkest Summer

I pulled her close, our lips barely brushing. Not quite a kiss, but enough to tilt my world on its axis. The air thickened around us, as her fingertips climbed my arms, then my throat, before they pressed lightly to my chest—right over the place I’d kept from aching for so long. That bled more tonight than in years.

I might have held her too hard, because at some point, I heard her whisper,“I’m here, Thomas.”

The words cracked something inside of me. Not like glass, but like ice, melting. Sudden. Shocking. A release. My breathing hitched, my pulse stuttered, then quickened.

She’s here.

I breathed her in. Forehead to forehead. Her scent. Her nearness. Her everything.

Her fingers clung to the fabric of my shirt, grounding me, holding together when I didn’t know how to do it myself. When I was on the edge of unraveling.

Slowly, reverently, I lifted her shirt over her head. My hands skimmed her skin like they were learning her for the first time. Tracing something delicate, something sacred.

Because that’s what she was to me.

Holy.

I leaned over her, wrapping us in the soft blankets. She was warm beneath me, her breath brushing my lips in soft, steady exhales. My fingers traced the dip of her spine, then over the curve of her waist, committing her shape to memory.

We weren’t rushing this time. I wanted the moment to last forever. Just this.Just us.

My lips brushed the hollow beneath her jaw, pressing with aching gentleness. Then lower, to the bruises faintly shadowed around her neck… Remnants of fear and pain I couldn’t undo.

So I kissed them like I could. Like I could unwrite the cruel mark. Like I could give back what the world had taken.

She shivered in my arms, as I tasted her pulse—fast, real, alive. Her hands slid up my back and curled around my shoulders, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us.

Only heat.

Only breath.

Only us.

When I kissed her, it was slow. Deep. The kind of kiss that saysstay.The kind that feels like coming home.

My hand slid down her side, my fingers curving around her hip, pressing gently into her skin. A breath caught in her throat and escaped against my neck as I kissed just below her ear, my nose brushing the sensitive skin.

Kinsley’s hands moved with quiet purpose, skimming the length of my spine.

She felt like home.

She was home.

“Kinsley,” I breathed her name against her skin.

She sighed and tilted her head to meet my gaze. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes gleaming, in a way that made my heart forget how to beat for a second.

I let my lips travel lower, across her collarbone, down the center of her chest. My fingers brushed up her thigh, tracing slow, careful patterns against her bare skin. She shivered against me, every inch of her warm and inviting.

She was here.Alive.

We both were.

And I was about to show her just how much, in every way I knew how.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Thomas