Still did.
“I miss you,” he said again, even gentler this time. “Not just the us from before. But you now. The woman who’s figuring it out. The woman whose going after everything I never should’ve let you let go of in the first place. I see you…and I miss you.”
Sabine swallowed hard, like his words touched something too deep to say out loud. She didn’t move away when he touched her face. His fingers brushed her cheek. Light. Like reverence.
It was nothing like earlier.
Not like the touch she’d pulled away from hours ago.
Harlan had been kind. Gentle. Respected her pause without question. His touch had been safe, measured, intentional but it hadn’t reached her. Not like this.
Because this—Adair’s hand on her skin, the warmth in his palm, the tremble he barely showed—this was the touch her body always remembered. The one her spirit, her mind, her whole soul still answered to no matter how many times she told it not to.
This was the ache she'd buried. The hunger she’d trained herself to ignore and in one small caress, it rose like it had never left.
Not a spark.
A calling.
“Say something,” he whispered. She leaned in. Just slightly. Her voice barely there.
“I don’t want to want you.”
That broke him.
Because that meant she did.
Adair didn’t ask permission out loud. He didn’t need to. Not when her breath was already catching, her body already leaning toward his without force or pressure.
There was nothing rushed in how he touched her. Nothing assumed. Just the steady, reverent patience of a man who wasn’t trying to take, but offer.
Every move said:I’ll follow your lead.
Every pause said:I remember you.
No one had ever held her like he did. Like she was both the wound and the salve. And right now, in this quiet, messy, middle-of-the-night truth…her whole being craved the honesty in his hand more than any speech.
It wasn’t fair.
But it was real.
And she let him keep touching her. Her body answered for her—with the slow press of her palm against his chest, the soft tilt of her chin, the way her lips parted just enough to whisper a want without sound.
This wasn’t about permission.
It was about trust.
And she gave it to him.
Sabine didn’t pull away when he leaned in. Didn’t resist when their mouths finally met. Soft. Searching. Like he was learning her lips all over again. The kiss deepened with need, but it wasn’t fast. It was full. Mouths parting and finding, hands still unsure where they belonged, but hearts—those traitorous, tangled hearts—beating loud in the silence.
Adair lifted her gently—hands at her waist, sliding under her thighs—and she wrapped around him instinctively, like her body never forgot the way he carried her.
In the bedroom, clothes peeled away slowly. Like forgiveness. Her breath hitched when his hand touched her rib, then her hip, then lower. She gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed it whole.
This wasn’t like before.
It wasn’t a reconciliation.