Esther lifted her head the moment Gaara’s question reached her. She didn’t answer with words, only with a familiar, quiet smile he had seen on her lips so many times before. Something inside him loosened at the sight, a strange sense of relief washing through him. But that calm vanished the instant she leaned in, her face suddenly much too close. Before he could react, she kissed him.
For a heartbeat, Gaara froze. Then, as if a switch had been flipped inside him, he responded with a fierce hunger that startled even himself. The logical part of his mind dissolved, drowned by something primal and urgent. He stopped caring about everything: the noise still echoing in his head, the chaos they had left behind, even the fact that she was drunk. In some deep, unguarded corner of his mind, Gaara
