The room was plunged into silence.
The kind of silence that only exists after the climax—when the bodies have already screamed everything, and what remains is the echo of breath, the weight of surrender, and the feeling that something has been undone... or remade.
Zoey was still naked. Sitting on Victor's lap, her legs wrapped around his waist as if the world began and ended there. Her sweaty back stuck to his chest, their hearts beating in an almost identical rhythm. Her head resting on his shoulder, her eyes half-closed but awake.
She didn't want to move a muscle. And Victor didn't seem in a hurry to let her go.
The candles still burned, now more slowly, casting tremulous shadows on the walls. The marks of the night were scattered throughout the space: discarded scarves, clothes on t
