AMARIS
I did not answer him with words.
I want that on the record, because words are my entire personality, and the one moment my life genuinely called for a speech, I set down the glass I had never sipped, stood up out of that chair, crossed the space between us, and put my mouth on his.
He went still.
One full second. The stillness of a man who had prepared for every version of no and had not finished preparing for yes. And then his hand came up into my hair and the stillness broke and Corvin Grave kissed me back the way a dam does not so much open as stop pretending it was ever holding.
Oh, my brain observed, uselessly. Oh no. He's been holding this the whole time.
