After a time, with my back pressed against my doorframe, he was kissing my neck when my fingers trailed the collar of his shirt and found the top button. Without thought, I released the binding and moved on to the next. Arie drew his head back, his breaths ragged. He watched me continue down the series of buttons and slip off his shirt. As I went to lift his undershirt, his stomach muscles tightened, but he stilled my hands.

“Wait,” he said in a throaty whisper. “If…you’re not ready for any of this…it’s okay.” The desire in his eyes was unmistakable, bordering on primal. And yet at any point, he would stop at the smallest trace of my hesitation. I knew this with total certainty, and that fact only magnified my yearning to be closer.

By way of an answer, I kept hold of one of his hands and led him through my room to the foot of the bed. He asked again if I was sure, searching my face for the truth.

I’d never been surer of anything. For once again, it was just the two of us at night, existing in our own private world where I needn’t worry over perception or judgment, propriety or consequence. The entire universe became the room around us.

Free to act on impulse, we soon lay together with clothes peeled away, skin on skin, vulnerable yet safe. His movements, while tender and cautious—almost overly so—filled me with a rush of foreign, indescribable sensations. And through the height of our intimacy, I came to realize what I should have long before then: the reason I’d shunned other boys was never about Hendrik or about part of me being broken.

It was always about Arie.

Chapter 25

Crickets chirped outside the partially open window, their soothing tune riding the warm night air. In the shadows on a bed made for one, Arie lay behind me curled on his side, propping his head with his hand. His other fingers grazed my upper back in slow, hypnotic loops and swirls. Even as I teetered on the groggy edge of sleep, I could sense his mental gears cranking.

I teased with a groan, “Doesn’t your brain ever turn off?”

His caresses paused. No witty comeback. Instead, he slid his hand to my waist, where the sheet draped us both. His heated breaths hovered at my ear, raising tiny hairs on my neck. “Marry me, Fen.”

The string of words drifted through me. The instant they took hold, my mind cleared with a jolt. Had I misheard? I twisted to view Arie by a wedge of lamplight from the doorway. The gleam in his eyes provided the answer.

Fragments of a laugh tumbled out of me. “Arie, that’s crazy.”

He raised up high on his elbow. “Why?”