He didn’t want to open himself up to a loss. I understand that. We understand each other better than most.

“Last night you said you weren’t leaving, and I believe you,” he says, but desperation trickles through his voice, and I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t really believe me or he feels safe enough to show how he really feels now. He watches me, waiting to see if I want this too.

I nod.

His eyes drift over me and glaze slightly as he leans forward to place a breeze-light kiss on the corner of my mouth and then hovers there, waiting for something. Permission, maybe.

I give it with a turn of my head, angling my mouth right in front of his, leaving the tiniest breath of air between us.

He closes the gap, soft and tentative at first as the hand holding my chin drifts to my hair, and his other hand presses at my back, trying to pull me closer even though my knees clank against the bench. I break off long enough to brace my hands on his thighs and crawl on top of the bench to get closer to him. His kiss grows hungrier, and he pulls me to him. My hands flutter. I don’t know what to do with them. I place them in front of me, on his chest, but he’s not wearing a shirt, and the skin-on-skin contact jolts me in a way that makes me hesitate. I move and grip his leather vest instead, the soft material sliding against my fingertips.

I try to memorize it at first—the exact softness and hardness of his mouth, the way my knees begin to hurt from kneeling on the hard bench, the mustiness of the room, and then I give up. He doesn’t pull back until I’ve forgotten who I am, where I am. The feeling terrifies me, and yet I want to sink into it again. It’s different than Roman, where our hurt was tangled up with our kisses, which made them too hungry. Xander kisses like he wants to forget the world, not save it. I want that too. At least right now.

He takes a shaky breath. I want to lean in and take it from him.

I lean away from him instead, suddenly overly conscious of my own skin, and it has nothing to do with the magical buzz of my performance. Aristelle’s leather pants are unbearably sticky.

“I need to get out of these pants,” I mutter.

His eyes widen.

“I mean—” I jump off the bench I’ve been kneeling on. “They’re just really hot.” Not as hot as my face, though.

His mouth quivers with barely contained laughter. “I could snap my fingers and change them for you.” He winks.