I reached for her, drawing her to my arms, into my chest where the word had struck like an arrow. “I am, you know.”

“I do,” she said, her hand on my face and her eyes bright with honesty.

I kissed her so she wouldn’t say more, a tender seam of our lips. And I wondered how to stop myself from falling. Once in motion, was there anything I could do? Would I be too late to throw out my hands, to minimize the damage? Or was I already doomed?

I knew the answer without fully acknowledging it, glancing over it, through it, anywhere but directly in the eye. There was no way to separate myself from the truth—I was in over my head. I was at her mercy. And I couldn’t turn back if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.

So I kissed her until our breaths were heavy, until the function of my brain quieted to only the most necessary of functions necessary to hold her. I kissed her until the car had been still long enough for the cabbie to clear his throat. And the second we were through the lobby and into the elevator of the hotel, I kissed her again. I kissed her down the hallway in a blind stumble for our room, swallowed her sighs and her laughter. I kissed her into our room, the one we’d shared for weeks, long enough that the suite was filled with us—our memories, our nights, all the whispers and all the laughter.

And all I wanted, all I wanted in the world, was for her to be mine.

And she finally was.

The room was dark, unfathomably black. I could see nothing in the infinite darkness, but I could feel her. Hear her breath, the shuffle of fabric and abandoned shoes and bare feet on carpet, and the sound of our lips as they met, parted, met again. Electric was the feeling, and I imagined that if I opened my eyes, I would catch sight of a spark when fingertips brushed skin, where our bodies met, skating over our lips in a crackling web.

Her hands. They were all I could consider as they held my face, the scratch of my stubble loud against her soft palms. Down my chest they roamed with fire in their wake, down to the buckle of my pants.