The air between them had shifted.
One kiss had changed everything.
Zariah stood frozen, her pulse still racing, her lips tingling where Dorian's mouth had claimed hers with a tenderness that shouldn't have belonged to a man like him. A man who carried shadows on his shoulders and spoke in riddles. A man she has sworn not to trust.
And yet her body didn't know how to lie. It leaned towards him, betraying her with every sharky breath.
"Dorian..' her voice broke, soft as secret.
He didn't answer at first. His hand was still on her jaw, thumb brushing the line of her cheek as though he couldn't stop himself. His gaze burned into hers, searching, questioning, almost apologizing.
"I shouldn't have done that," he murmured, though his fingers lingered, though his body didn't move away.
Zariah swallowed hard. "Then why did you?"
His silence was an answer in itself. He bent his head slightly, as if words were too small, too fragile, for the truth swelling between them.
And then she understood this wasn't about reason. This was about need.
Zariah's breath caught as his lips brushed hers again. Softer this time. Testing. Asking. When she didn't pull away, he deepened the kiss, careful but hungry, like he was memorizing the shape of her mouth, the taste of her exhale.
Her hands rose without thought, curling into the fabric of his coat. She felt the steady strength beneath it, the restraint, the storm.
He kissed like a man starved of gentleness.
And she kissed him back like someone who had finally stopped running.
But the time he pulled away, her legs trembled. He leaned his forehead against hers, both of them breathing too hard for the quiet room.
"Zariah," he whispered, almost like a warning, almost like a prayer.
Her heart ached with the weight of it. "Why do I feel like you're the only safe place I have... When you're also the one I should fear the most?"
Dorian closed his eyes. She thought he wouldn't answer. But then.. "because both can be true."
The honesty in his voice cracked something inside her. She hated him for it and yet, in that moment, she wanted nothing more than to fall into the danger of him anyway.
There, in the stolen quiet of her apartment, they didn't need answers. They didn't need explanations. Just the steady language of breath, touch, closeness the kind of truth that couldn't be spoken, only felt.
And for the first time since her mother's death, Zariah didn't feel alone.