Chapter 53: Let’s have Sex
Aria’s words didn’t hang in the air.
They didn’t drift like smoke or land soft like petals. No, they slammed into me with the force of a spell I hadn’t braced for. "Let’s have sex," she said, and it might as well have been a divine command.
One that bypassed every rational nerve in my body and struck squarely at the chaos in my chest, where lust, confusion, curiosity, and thirty-seven varieties of "what the fuck" did somersaults in time with my pulse.
I blinked. I actually blinked. Not the slow, smoldering kind, but the deer-in-headlights, "did-someone-slip-me-a-potion" kind. My lips parted, but no words came out—just a little squeak of breath that betrayed the storm in my skull. My body hadn’t moved. Every limb had frozen in place like I’d stepped on a pressure plate, and the wrong breath would detonate the world. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh, run, or offer her a drink and a place to sit.
"Aria..." I began, and didn’t finish.
Because that was when she kissed me.
It wasn’t a shy thing. Not a soft, fluttering, maidens-curiosity kind of kiss. No, it was wet, messy, and inarguable. Her mouth crushed against mine, lips parting with such slick determination that all thought left the room and slammed the door behind it. I tasted breath, fire, a whimper caught in the back of her throat like a secret, and maybe just a hint of whatever starlight she was spun from.
She pulled back just barely—enough for breath, not logic.
Then she lifted her dress.
Not with a coy hand or a seductive slink. Just—lifted. Straight up, tattered fabric sliding over her thighs like it had betrayed her modesty for the last time. And there, in the low blue glow of the greenhouse light, her body spoke for her.
No underwear. No pretense. Just slick, glistening confirmation that she hadn’t been joking. Moisture threaded between her thighs in slow, sticky strings like molten silver catching the moonlight. It wasn’t the sort of thing you looked at. It was the kind of sight that pulled you in, like the tide, like gravity, like fate holding a wet, trembling breath.
She whispered one word. A single syllable, fragile and trembling with too many layers to count.