Page 130 of The Darkest Hour

With all the mud, she looked even more captivating.

My heart stirred.

“I’m serious. I can’t breathe without you, Onyx.” I watched my words slip along her body. “I would die.”

She fully opened her eyes, and I saw the same thing reflected back at me.

The same realization.

The same truth.

She reached up and brushed mud off my chin with her thumb. “And I’m serious. . .you will never have to breathe without me.”

A sense of peace poured over my body, mingling with the rain.

We were connected now, in a way that went beyond the physical, beyond even the storm that fell on us.

And as I held her in my arms, feeling the steady beat of her heart against mine, I knew that I was ready for whatever that future held, as long as it was with her.

More and more, the rain began to taper off.

The sky lightened.

Her scent enveloped me even more.

I breathed it in deeply, letting it further fill my lungs.

My mind.

My very soul.

It was to the point where I now couldn't remember a time when her scent wasn't there, lingering in the air around me, weaving its way into my thoughts.

But as I lay there, holding her close, a question began to gnaw at the edges of my mind.

Was this even her scent?

Or. . .was it the true scent of love?

Had that been what I smelled the first time I caught it?

There’d been power in the scent, the way it called to me, wrapped around my senses and pulled me in.

Hmmm.

Again, I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to smell my own scent.

It was a strange thought, one that I hadn't considered before. I had always been so aware of my own presence, my own identity, but now. . .now it was as if I had been consumed by her, by the scent that defined her.

I couldn't smell myself anymore, couldn't separate my scent from hers.

We had become one, our essences intertwined in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying.

She permeated every part of me.

Maybe that is the true scent of love.

The inability to distinguish where one person ended and the other began.

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