His words weren’t just heat. They were ruin.

And she loved every second of it.

Because when his hand slid higher — when his fingers finally found that place between her thighs, slow at first, deliberate, teasing — Lilith’s breath hitched, sharp and sweet. She didn’t stop him. Didn’t pretend she had control. She just let her head fall back against the pillows, lips parted, lashes heavy, a sound slipping out that was too low to be mistaken for anything but surrender.

God, she did crave this.

The way he touched her like she was sacred. The way he looked at her like she was the only thing that had ever been worth breaking for. It set her veins on fire. Made her want to drag him deeper, make him drown in everything he claimed she was.

“Nico…” His name poured from her like silk, low and coaxing, her hips rolling up to meet his hand. “You feel what you do to me?”

Her nails raked down his back again, not enough to hurt, just enough to leave him marked — hers, claimed, branded. She tilted her chin so their mouths brushed, but she didn’t kiss him yet, not fully. “Every time you touch me like this, I forget the rest of the world even exists.”

He pressed harder, fingers working her open, and her thighs spread wider without hesitation, welcoming him, urging him on. The shirt he loved so much had ridden up almost completely now, leaving her bared beneath his hand. She laughed softly — sultry, dangerous, wanting. “Look at me, baby. Look at what you do to me.”

And when his eyes finally met hers — storm-dark, pupils blown, worship written all over him — Lilith leaned up and kissed him hard. Not gentle. Not slow. A kiss that bit and begged and promised all at once.

“You’re right,” she breathed against his mouth, her voice gone husky now. “This isn’t just sex. This is ours. And I’m not letting you stop until I can’t remember my own name.”

Her hand slipped between them, curling around him through his jeans, squeezing just enough to drag a groan from his throat. Her smile curved wicked and soft, heat blooming in every word.

“Now show me, Nico. Show me what forever feels like.”

Nico moved like a man chasing salvation — not with urgency, but with devotion. Like every inch of her was a cathedral and his hands had memorized every stained-glass secret inside.

She wasn’t just a body beneath him.

She was gravity and wildfire, velvet ruin wrapped in silk and sweat, and God, he’d drown in her gladly.

Her breath hitched, and he felt it like a ripple in his spine — like thunder rolling through bone. The sound of her unraveling was symphonic, a hymn that pulled him deeper into belief. She arched for him like a flame seeking oxygen, and all he wanted was to burn with her.

He kissed her like he was starving — not for touch, but for truth. For the way she tasted like defiance and surrender braided into one perfect ache. And when she whispered his name, it wasn’t just sound — it was invocation. A tether around his ribs. A spark behind his ribs.

She told him to show her what forever felt like.

So he did.

Not with words, but with the press of his chest against hers. With the way his fingers knew every gasp, every pause. With the way he looked at her — like she was creation and collapse, and he was the fool who thanked God for both.

Their rhythm was poetry — not the soft kind, but the kind that left ink stains and made hearts bleed.

And when her body arched like a bow pulled taut, when her mouth dropped open in a silent vow, he knew:

He could live a hundred lifetimes and still only ever write his name on her skin.

Because forever, for Nico Romano, wasn’t a ring or a vow or a song on the charts.

It was this —
Her.
Breathless.
Bared.
Holy.

And only ever his.

He worshipped her like he’d been born to it.
And God, she loved it.

But forever wasn’t something she wanted rushed. Not when he was trembling above her, not when his words painted her into myth, not when his mouth promised eternity with every kiss.

Her hand slid to his jaw, guiding him up from her throat until their mouths hovered, breath tangled. “Slow down,” she whispered, sultry and steady, her voice velvet-dipped command. “If you want forever, Nico, you don’t sprint through it. You savor it.”

Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt and worked them loose one by one, deliberate, almost cruel in her patience. Each reveal — collarbone, chest, the line of muscle she knew by heart — was a secret she unwrapped like a gift. She brushed her nails over newly bared skin, smiling at the way he shivered beneath her touch.

“Let me see you,” she murmured, tugging the shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall forgotten to the floor. “Every inch. I’ve been starving too, and I’m done waiting.”

Before he could answer, she slid his hand from where it burned between her thighs and pressed it flat to her heart. “Feel that? That’s yours. Always. But I want you slow. I want to undress each other like we’ve got all night to prove it.”

She tugged at his belt, dragging the leather through the loops with sinful ease, her smile curving sharp and soft all at once. Her legs wrapped tighter around his hips, keeping him close, teasing the heat of him through denim. “Patience, baby,” she breathed against his lips. “I want to feel you lose every layer for me. Piece by piece.”

Her own hands guided his back down her body, this time to the hem of the shirt that still clung to her skin. The fabric was already bunched high, but she lifted her arms, inviting him to strip it away entirely. And when he did — when his eyes swept over her, bare and waiting — she arched like she’d given him a benediction.

“You wanted communion?” Her voice was husky now, dripping sin and devotion both. “Then worship slow. We’ve got forever to burn.”

And with that, she kissed him again — deep, sultry, unhurried — pulling him into a rhythm that wasn’t about climax, but about peeling back everything until they were nothing but skin and promise.

God, she undid him.

Not with force. Not with speed. With stillness. With intention.

The way her voice dropped — velvet-wrapped, steady — cracked something open inside him. She could’ve asked for the moon and he would’ve gone to get it, barefoot and bleeding if he had to. But she didn’t ask. She commanded. And he obeyed.

Because Lilith wasn’t just a woman to him.

She was the altar. The prayer. The reason.

So when she said slow down, he listened. Even when every part of him pulsed with the urge to pull her close and never let go, he stilled. Let her touch guide him. Let her voice tether him to the moment.

Her fingers moved like they had all the time in the world. Like she already knew what was underneath his shirt but wanted to rediscover it anyway — deliberately, reverently, as though she were unwrapping a relic instead of a man. His breath caught when her nails scraped softly over his chest. It wasn’t pain. It was permission. To feel. To be felt.

And when she pressed his hand to her heart—

God.

He forgot what it meant to breathe.

That’s yours, she said.

He didn’t need vows. Didn’t need rings or promises whispered in some far-off chapel. That moment — palm to heartbeat, shirt half-off, the city blinking beyond the glass — that was the vow.

The way she touched his belt like she wasn’t just undressing him but peeling back every inch of space that ever existed between them — it made his knees weak. The denim still separating them felt like a cruelty. Her legs tightening around his hips felt like salvation.

She didn’t rush.

She ruined.

And when she lifted her arms, offering herself up to him — not in surrender but in certainty — he stripped the shirt from her like it was something holy. Like it had weight, meaning, memory. And then he saw her.

All of her.

And it nearly dropped him.

Lilith, bare and burning, arching like a star being born, her eyes daring him to forget anything else had ever existed before this.

You wanted communion? she asked.

He almost laughed. Almost cried.

Because no choir, no sermon, no god he’d ever prayed to came close to the way she said his name when he kissed her again. The way she let him worship. Not for show. Not for power.

But because she trusted him to hold her like a storm without losing himself in the wreckage.

And he did.

Slow. Gentle. Like she was the last lyric of a song he didn’t want to finish.

Because this — her, here, now — wasn’t just intimacy.

It was infinity.

And he’d spend the rest of his life proving it.

Lilith wasn’t in any hurry.

Not when she had him like this — breathless, trembling just enough for her to feel it, eyes fixed on her like she was the beginning and end of every prayer he’d ever whispered in the dark.

Her hands slid to his waistband, slow, patient. She unfastened the button and eased the zipper down like she was dismantling the last piece of distance between them. The rasp of metal against fabric sounded loud in the hush of the room, almost ceremonial.

He groaned low in his chest when her knuckles brushed the line of his stomach. She smiled at that — a sultry, knowing curl of her lips — and tugged his jeans down over his hips. He shifted only enough to help, never taking his gaze off her. And when she peeled away his last barrier, his body bared and beautiful beneath the city glow filtering through the glass, she let herself pause.

God.

She’d seen him like this a hundred times. A thousand. And still, it unraveled her.

He was carved in strength and ink, every tattoo a story, every line of muscle a reminder that devotion wasn’t weakness — it was power. He looked like something ancient, like a Roman god sculpted for her alone. And she adored him for it. Not just for the body — though, God, that body — but because he gave it wholly, without reservation. Because he was hers, in every sense that word could mean.

Her hand traced the planes of his chest, nails ghosting down his ribs, over his hipbone, leaving him shivering under her touch. She leaned up, pressing her lips to his sternum, kissing slow, reverent, the way he so often kissed her.

“You always call me goddess,” she murmured against his skin, her voice low, molten. She kissed lower, lips brushing the ink just above his ribs. “But look at you, Nico. Strong. Beautiful. Untouchable to everyone else. My Roman god.”

Her eyes lifted to meet his, dark and sultry, a smile tugging at her lips as she slid her hands down his bare sides and pulled him closer until their bodies aligned. “I love it when you worship me,” she whispered, her tone a dangerous purr, “but don’t ever forget — I worship you, too.”

She kissed him then, hard and lingering, her body arching to meet his, slow and certain. Every movement was deliberate, sensual, not to finish them but to stretch it out, to savor the undressing as its own kind of intimacy.

Because for Lilith, this wasn’t just desire.

This was devotion.

Nico didn’t speak at first.

Couldn’t.

Because there she was — not just Lilith, not just the woman who undid him with a glance, but something holy in the half-light. Her skin caught the city glow like marble warmed by candlelight, and her breath hitched when he finally touched her again — slow, reverent, like every curve of her was a verse he hadn’t read in too long.

His hands moved with purpose, but not hunger. Not yet. This was more than need. This was memory and longing and the kind of ache you carry when you’re finally allowed to hold what you were never meant to let go of.

His fingers traced the length of her arm, from shoulder to wrist, brushing the inside of her palm like he was learning her all over again. She opened her hand to him without hesitation. God, that trust. That surrender.

He leaned in, brushing his mouth against her collarbone — not a kiss, not exactly. A vow. Quiet and warm and completely hers.

“You think I forgot?” he whispered, voice thick with devotion. “There hasn’t been a single night, Lilith, where I didn’t crave this. Not just your body. You.”

He let his hands explore in silence — down her ribs, across her waist, pausing at her hip like it was the edge of a map he’d memorized but never stopped wanting to trace. She shivered under his touch, and still, he didn’t rush.

“Every inch of you,” he murmured against her skin, lips brushing along the hollow of her throat, “I know it like prayer. I worship it like sin.”

Her hands slid into his hair again, tugging gently, grounding him — and he smiled against her, eyes closing. He’d waited for this. For her. For the kind of quiet that only came when two storms chose to meet gently.

He pulled the blanket up slightly, just enough to cocoon her in warmth as he shifted beside her, tucking her into his chest. Still touching, still worshipping — now with his breath at her temple and his fingers stroking the back of her thigh in slow, absent circles.

No one had ever made him feel like this. Like he was home even while trembling.

And when he finally spoke again, it was a whisper meant only for her skin.

“You’re not just mine, Lilith,” he breathed, holding her close. “You’re my reason.”

She moved beneath his hands like a psalm he’d forgotten how to sing — soft, deliberate, unknowable in her entirety but familiar in every curve.

Nico let his touch wander, reverent and unhurried, as though her skin might vanish if he dared too much. Each breath she took lifted her chest beneath him, each exhale a benediction, warm against his throat. He followed the rhythm of it, grounding himself in the rise and fall of her, in the way her pulse thrummed steady beneath his fingers.

His palm slid down the line of her side, memorizing the arc of her waist, the heat of her stomach, the dip of her hipbone like it was carved for him to find. She arched slightly, not to provoke — never that — but to offer. An invitation wrapped in stillness. A gift without condition.

He grazed his knuckles along the inside of her thigh, slow and steady, a breath caught between prayer and possession. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t speak. She just watched him — eyes half-lidded, mouth soft and parted, a goddess unbothered by time.

And God, he adored her.

Not for the way she looked, though she was breathtaking. Not for the way she fit against him, though she always had. But for the silence she allowed him to fill. For the stillness that said: I am yours, and I know you are mine.

He dragged his hand up again, over her ribs, across the valley of her sternum, and felt her shiver beneath his touch. Not from cold. From knowing. From being seen.

There was no rush in this. No endgame.

Only the slow, sacred undoing of the space between two people who had already chosen each other — over and over, in every city, every silence, every second spent apart.

He rested his forehead against hers for a long moment. Just breathing. Just being.

And in that hush — candlelit and golden and weightless — Nico finally let himself fall all the way into her again.

Not in motion.

Not in words.

But in worship.

Lilith loved him like this — steady, reverent, utterly undone beneath his own devotion. He touched her as if she were both flame and scripture, and it made her ache in ways no spotlight ever could.

But she wasn’t content to only receive. Not tonight. Tonight, she wanted to savor him.

Her hand drifted down his chest, tracing the firm lines of muscle she knew by memory but still wanted to rediscover. She mapped him with fingertips and nails, slow and deliberate, until she reached his stomach and felt the way it tightened under her touch. God, the restraint it took for him to stay still — she felt it in the tremor of his breath, in the heat radiating off him.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, her lips brushing the curve of his jaw as her hand slid lower, exploring the length of him until it settled at his hips. She paused there, not out of hesitation but intention, letting him feel her certainty in every stroke of her palm.

And then, with a deliberate slowness, she lifted her hand to her mouth, parted her lips, and let her tongue drag across her skin — wetting it, preparing it. When she reached for him again, her touch was slick, sure, and utterly unhurried.

His groan was low, wrecked, vibrating against her collarbone. She smiled, sultry and soft, brushing her lips along his temple while her hand closed firmly around him, stroking with languid precision.

“Every inch of you,” she murmured, her voice husky now, heavy with love and want, “belongs here. With me. Always.”

Her thumb swept over him, teasing, coaxing, while her free hand tangled into his hair, grounding him as much as he grounded her. He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes shut tight, like the sensation was too much to hold. And she loved that. Loved that she could bring him to the edge with nothing but patience, nothing but love.

Her movements stayed slow, intentional — not chasing the end but savoring the moment, the weight of his body, the devotion in his eyes when he finally dared to look at her again.

Lilith shifted beneath him, guiding him lower with steady, unhurried strokes. Her legs wrapped tighter around his hips, pulling him into the cradle of her body until the head of him pressed against her entrance. She didn’t rush — she lingered there, savoring the shiver that rolled through him, savoring the way his breath caught against her lips.

And then, with a slow arch of her hips, she drew him inside.

The first stretch of him inside her stole her breath, a low moan slipping past her lips before she could stop it. She clung to his shoulders, nails digging just enough to remind him that this wasn’t just passion, it was possession — soul to soul, body to body.

Nico groaned into her mouth, the sound raw, ragged, vibrating through her chest as he pressed deeper, inch by inch, until there was nothing left between them. She shifted her hips, drawing him in fully, savoring the way his body trembled against hers at the sheer intensity of it.

They didn’t move at first. They just were. Forehead to forehead, lips brushing, their hearts beating so close it felt like one.

And then, slowly, she rolled her hips.

The rhythm started languid, sensual — her guiding him with the steady press of her body, every motion deliberate, every arch of her back an invitation to linger. She tilted her head, kissing him deeper, swallowing the groans that spilled from his throat as he began to move with her, finding the rhythm she set.

He wasn’t rushing — not this time. Each thrust was careful, reverent, like he was trying to etch himself into her bones. And God, she let him. She met every push with her own, wrapping her legs tighter around him, pulling him deeper until she swore she could feel him in every part of her.

The pleasure built slow, coiling, molten. Not frantic. Not hurried. But consuming all the same. She kissed along his throat, his jaw, his shoulder, tasting the salt of his skin, feeling the way his breath hitched every time she clenched around him.

Her hand slid down his back, pulling him flush, chest to chest, so close she swore she could feel his heartbeat inside her. Their bodies moved together like a hymn, like a vow spoken in rhythm and heat instead of words.

Lilith gasped against his mouth when he shifted deeper, his hand braced against her thigh to angle her just right. The sensation ripped through her, electric, overwhelming. She broke the kiss, eyes fluttering open, staring into his. Dark, endless, worshipful.

“Nico…” It was barely a sound, more like a prayer.

He swallowed it with another kiss, desperate and tender, and pressed harder, faster now, still steady but with more weight, more heat. She matched him, hips rising to meet every stroke, her moans tangled with his groans until the room was nothing but their sound, their breath, their love breaking through every wall.

The tension built, tight and inevitable, every motion bringing them closer, every kiss more frantic than the last. Her nails raked across his back, her body arching into his as the pressure threatened to consume her.

And still, even as her body trembled on the edge, she knew this wasn’t just sex.

This was their souls, colliding and merging, breaking and healing, becoming one in every thrust, every kiss, every gasp.

This was forever.

She was gravity, and he was every orbit, every pull, every star that had ever broken just to fall closer to her.

Nico had touched stages, paper, steel — but nothing had ever answered him like her skin. Like her breath on his shoulder. Like the weight of her name stitched into the marrow of his bones. Every motion was a verse. Every sigh, a gospel.

He didn’t need to look to know where her hands had been — he felt it, in the shiver that still echoed along his spine, in the phantom ache where her touch had branded him more permanent than ink.

She moved beneath him like fire learning patience — heat wrapped in grace. And he matched her, not with hunger, but with reverence. A rhythm not meant to conquer, but to remember. To carve the shape of her into his soul, slow and certain, like scripture into stone.

God, she was everything.

The before and the after. The breath and the ache. She didn’t just unravel him — she remade him. Thread by thread. Pulse by pulse. Until he wasn’t Nico the artist or Nico the performer or Nico the man the world tried to define. He was just hers.

He pressed his forehead to hers, their breaths tangled — not rushed, not ragged, just shared. As if even oxygen was more sacred between them. Her name was a weight on his tongue, too holy to speak. So he said it the only way he knew how — with his body, with his steadiness, with the kind of love that didn’t need volume to echo through eternity.

Every time he looked at her, he remembered what forever felt like.

And this? This was forever — not in the stretch of time, but in the stillness of a single moment where nothing else mattered.

Where her heart beat beneath his hand.

Where her eyes opened and held him like he was something worthy.

Where every breath said: I’m not afraid to be known.

He wasn’t worshiping her now.

He was with her.

And it was holy.

She held him like truth — undeniable, anchoring, terrifying in its clarity.

And Nico… he sank into it. Into her.

There was no edge between them now, no line where his body ended and hers began. Just heat and hush and the ache of something bigger than either of them — something ancient and aching and infinite. Like the moment a wave folds into the shore and forgets it was ever trying to leave.

His hands mapped her body again, not with urgency, but with memory. Palms dragging reverently along the slope of her waist, the curve of her ribs, the hollow where breath lived. She was a cathedral under his hands — soft light and sacred architecture — and he worshipped her the only way he knew how: slow, steady, and full of awe.

He kissed her shoulder, her collarbone, the place just beneath her jaw that always made her breath hitch. Not to take — never to take — but to thank. To etch the taste of her into every part of him that had ever felt hollow.

Because with her, nothing was empty.

Every breath was answered. Every silence, understood. Every trembling part of him she touched didn’t shatter — it healed.

She shifted beneath him, and he felt the change — not just in her body, but in the air. Like something sacred was unfolding. A prayer written not in words, but in the meeting of skin and devotion. And God, he held it. Held her. Like if he moved too fast, she’d vanish — not because she was fragile, but because this moment was.

Some people called it love.

But this? This was remembrance.

Like they’d known each other in other lives, in other stars, in every place the sky had ever broken open and spilled light. And now they were here again — colliding, crashing, choosing. Over and over. Through fire and ruin. Through softness and surrender.

Nico closed his eyes, forehead pressed to hers, and breathed her in.

Not to calm himself — but to anchor.

Because in a world that constantly demanded more, she asked for stillness.

And he gave it to her. Every pulse, every promise, every part of him that still believed in forever.

He gave it all.

To her.

Always.

Lilith felt it first — the shift in the air, the crackle beneath her skin. The way his rhythm stayed steady, reverent, even as her body begged for more. She met him stroke for stroke, hips rolling with his, savoring the drag, the fullness, the way he stretched her until there was no space left between them.

Every thrust was deeper now, heavier, the slow build of a storm she’d been aching for since the first night apart. Her nails raked across his back, marking him, pulling him closer. Her breath broke against his mouth, her moans low and shivering with heat as she clenched tighter around him.

God, she adored the way he held her. Not as something fragile, not as something fleeting, but as something eternal. His body pressed her into the mattress like an anchor, his lips trailing across her jaw, her throat, her shoulder — branding her with every kiss.

Her legs locked tighter around him, guiding him deeper, pulling him into the molten center of her. The pleasure coiled hot and electric in her belly, winding tighter with every push, every shiver of his breath against her skin.

“Don’t stop,” she gasped, the words broken, breathless, her forehead pressing hard to his. “Don’t—”

Her cry cut short as he shifted his angle, hitting that place inside her that made her vision blur, that made her whole body arch and tremble. The world narrowed to the stretch of him, the sound of his groan tearing from his chest, the sweat-damp slide of his skin against hers.

Lilith’s release ripped through her, sudden and consuming, her body bowing beneath him as the waves broke again and again. She clung to him, nails digging in, voice spilling his name like a prayer as she shattered around him.

Nico followed her over the edge, hips driving deep as his rhythm faltered, his body shaking with the force of it. He buried his face against her neck, groaning her name into her skin as he came undone inside her.

They stayed there, locked together, bodies trembling, breath mingling — neither of them rushing to move, neither of them needing to.

Because this wasn’t just release.

This was union.

Her soul curled around his in the stillness after, the aftershocks still fluttering through her body as she stroked her fingers through his damp hair, grounding him, keeping him close.

And when she finally caught her breath, she kissed his temple, soft and lingering, her voice low and steady in the hush.

“We’ll never lose this,” she whispered. “Not in this life. Not in any.”

And as she held him, feeling his heart thunder against hers, Lilith knew: there would never be another home but this.

There would never be another forever but him.

Nico had never believed in divinity until he touched her.

Not in the way preachers preached or saints were carved. But in the way a flame flickers to life when the wind kisses it just right. In the way stars burn out just to be reborn.

Lilith was both — the spark and the rebirth.

And when she moved with him, around him, like the earth itself had turned its gravity inward to hold him still — Nico felt it. Not just in flesh, but in soul. A tether, gold-threaded and ancient, pulling him deeper into her orbit.

She wasn’t a woman in those moments.

She was prophecy.

And he? He was nothing but a man on his knees before it.

Her voice — fractured and breathless — rang like church bells in his ears. Her body arched beneath him like a cathedral built for worship. And when her hands dragged fire down his spine, he swore he could feel lifetimes unraveling at her fingertips.

He moved with her, inside her, not chasing release but chasing eternity.

The rhythm they found wasn’t frantic — it was carved from reverence. As if his body knew hers in a language no lips could speak. As if he had been made not of muscle and sinew, but of vow and velvet and ash.

And when she broke — when her cry cracked the air and her body clutched him like prayer — Nico followed.

Not like a man falling.

But like a man flying toward the only truth he’d ever wanted to believe in.

Her. Always her.

And when the world stilled, when all that remained was sweat-slick skin and the hush that follows a holy thing, Nico buried his face in her hair and let the silence hold them.

Because this wasn’t just love.

This was devotion dressed in skin.

And in that sacred stillness, wrapped in her arms, he knew:

He’d never need heaven.

He’d already found it.

The room had stilled, but Nico hadn’t moved — not yet. His chest rose and fell against hers, breath syncing like tide to moon, the echo of their bodies still vibrating in his bones.

His fingers curled lightly at her waist, not gripping, just resting, like he needed to feel her anchored there to believe any of it was real.

He kissed the space just below her collarbone — soft, reverent.

Then, his voice, low and hoarse against her skin:
“You wreck me.”

She smiled, lazy and warm, her fingers threading through the damp curls at the nape of his neck.

He didn’t lift his head right away. Just let his words find her like smoke curling into candlelight.

“Every time I think I know what loving you feels like… you burn it all down and show me something deeper.”

Lilith’s hand cupped his cheek, coaxing him to look at her. When he finally met her gaze, his eyes were glassy with it — the kind of ache that had nothing to do with pain.

“I don’t want anyone else’s version of forever,” he said.
“Just this. Just us. In every lifetime.”

She exhaled like the words filled something in her.

“You already have me,” she murmured.

Nico kissed her then — slow, aching, like the vow had already been written in their blood long before either of them spoke it aloud.

“Still,” he said quietly, brushing her hair back with fingers that trembled with aftershock, “I’ll spend the rest of my life re-earning you.”

Her brow furrowed slightly, amused. “That’s not how love works.”

He smiled, barely.
“It is with you.”

A beat passed.

Then softer:
“You don’t just happen to a man like me, Lilith. You become myth. And I… I’m the fool who wakes up every day praying I get to touch it again.”

He touched her temple, her jaw, her lips — barely a brush of fingers like she was carved from something holy.

“And tonight?” he added, whispering it like confession.
“You made me believe God is real. Because no heaven I was promised could compare to this.”