Page 310 of Let Me In

My hand moves over her hip, a slow journey across her skin, warm and silken beneath my palm, the kind of softness that makes me feel like I’ve never truly touched anything until now. Her breath shifts at my touch, still heavy with sleep. I almost stop. Almost. But then I remember.

The yacht, a gleaming white specter on the sea.

Sending Lucian and his empire into the abyss.

The chill of sleeping in the truck for two nights, without her.

The sound of her voice, fragile and trying not to cry.

I can’t stay away another second. I need to be inside her.

To come home in the most primal, most sacred way there is.

My fingers spread wide over the small of her back, grounding.

Then lower, over the curve of her hip, the line of her thigh beneath the fabric.

Her skin is warm there.

Sleep-warmed.

Emmy-warmed.

And familiar in a way that stuns me every time.

I lean down, brush my lips to her hairline—start there, because it’s always the first place I seek when I need to remind myself she’s real. Where the softness lives. Where I first felt her breathe against me that night she truly let go. Where safety begins.

Inhale the soft scent of her; lavender and something sweeter.

The way safety would smell, if it had a name.

“Baby,” I murmur—just that. Not a demand. Not even a request. Just a thread I offer her in the quiet.

She stirs, barely. Her brows twitch, nose crinkling as that soft, kitten-like sound she makes slips from her throat and lands in mine. It’s so small, so instinctive, I feel it more than hear it.

I kiss her again, a little lower this time, right between her brows—slow, like I’m easing open the lock to something fragile.

Then, with my lips brushing her skin, voice no louder than breath, “I need you.”

That gets through. Not all at once, but enough to reach her somewhere soft and sleeping.

Her lashes flutter. Her breath catches. Then she blinks up at me, eyes glassy with sleep, soft and open. No walls. No fear.

Just her.

And I feel it—in my bones, in my chest, in the way my heart stutters like it’s been caught mid-beat. She’s it. The axis I turn on. The reason I found my way back.

The reason I made it back.

The only reason I want to stay.

She lifts her head a little, not fully awake, but present.

And I swear.

Even in the dark, her gaze sees me.

I cradle her cheek.

---