He reaches across the center console and hooks a finger under my chin, turning my face fully toward him. “You’re allowed to want normal parts.”
“I don’t live in a normal world,” I remind him.
“Neither do I.”
The wind shifts outside, and I feel the quiet press in closer. He slides his hand from my chin to the side of my neck, thumb brushing just beneath my ear. It’s not rough. It’s deliberate.
“You were different in there,” he says.
“How?”
“You let your guard down.”
I laugh softly. “Did I?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s dangerous?”
“Everything is.”
His thumb drifts lower, tracing the curve where my neck meets my collarbone. My breath changes before I can stop it, and he notices.
“You’re thinking,” he murmurs.
“I’m always thinking.”
“Not right now.”
He leans closer, the space between us narrowing until I can feel the heat of him even in the cooling car. My father’s warnings recede further, blurred by the memory of laughter and the steady weight of Cillian’s hand.
Belonging.
That’s what this feels like.
Not strategy. Not leverage.
Belonging.
His fingers slide into my hair at the nape of my neck, guiding rather than forcing, and I don’t resist. I lean toward him on my own, closing the last inch.
“Tell me to stop,” he says softly.
I don’t.
Instead, I lift my hand to his jaw and run my thumb along the edge of his mouth, feeling the faint scrape of stubble against my skin. His lips part slightly under the touch, and the look in his eyes darkens.
“I don’t want to stop,” I admit.
He exhales once through his nose, controlled but not distant. “Good.”
He pulls me across the console with surprising ease, one hand at my waist, the other steady in my hair. I shift onto his lap without thinking, knees braced against the seat, hands gripping his shoulders for balance. The world outside narrows to glass and dark water.
His mouth brushes mine first, slow and testing, and I open for him without being asked.
His hand slides up my back, fingers pressing into the fabric of my dress, holding me close. I kiss him harder, deeper, tasting salt and wine and something that feels dangerously close to trust.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to look at me, his gaze searching, then his hand cups the back of my head and he claimsmy mouth fully, decisively, as the car rocks slightly under the shift of our weight and the sea rolls on below us, indifferent and endless.