The air in the room is thick.
It is only when Mia, her lungs screaming for the oxygen he's been stealing, beats a frantic rhythm against his chest that Elias finally breaks the kiss.
They stay there for a long moment, chest to chest, their breathing ragged and synchronized in the heavy silence.
The room is very bright for this hour. It makes everything too visible—his eyes, which have gone dark in a way that has nothing to do with the lighting, the rise and fall of her chest, the specific quality of his attention, which has stopped being careful.
He looks at her the way you look at something you've been patient about for a very long time and have just been given permission to stop being patient about.
Mia goes very still.
He isn't touching her. He doesn't need to. The weight of his g
