Chapter 90 – One Last Night

Chapter 90 – One Last Night
Scarlett
The quiet following his words weighed more than any storm I'd ever traversed.
Kael was so close, not a breath between us, and yet the distance between us yawned like an abyss too deep to bridge. His last request still resonated within me — that naked, pleading admission shrouded in hope and despair. I hadn't agreed. But I hadn't refused either.
I was shaking, but not with fear. With the gravity of what tonight might be.
He stood there, holding back, and yet I could sense the tension vibrating beneath his epidermis like a repressed tempest. His gaze never wavered from mine — two seething puddles of black emotion I could succumb to if I wasn't holding on.
I still had the option to leave. But my feet wouldn't budge.
"Just… tonight," I whispered.
His shoulders locked, lips opening a fraction, but he didn't budge. Not until I took a step closer.
"Just tonight," I said again, more softly this time, because anything more would shatter the fragile thread keeping me sane.
And then Kael moved.
It was slow at first — reverent, as if he feared I would change my mind. His hand came up to sweep a lock of hair off my cheek, the edges of his fingers tracing down the line of my face. I leaned into his touch before I could prevent it. Gods, I had missed him. His smell, the warmth of his body, the way everything else fell away when he regarded me like this — like I was his entire world.
His thumb outlined my jaw and then he kissed me, mouth against my ear as he whispered, "You're still everything I burn for."
I didn't say a word. I couldn't. The pain in my chest was too acute.
So I kissed him.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't slow. It was all the unspoken words, all the sleepless nights, every shard of us that still fit together — careening into one wild, raw kiss.
Kael grunted into my mouth, his arms wrapping around my waist, then up my back, drawing me tightly against him. My hands cranked into his hair, pulling hard enough to make him suck in a breath before I pushed him back against the wall of the little cabin.
We shouldn't have fit like that after all we'd been through. But we did.
His lips were fire and promise, each movement fanning the flames that never fully went out. I yanked at his shirt, and he let me pull it off over his head in one smooth motion. The view of him — lean, muscular, scarred and gorgeous — punched the air from my lungs.
"You sure?" he growled, his voice already rough, but his eyes steady.
I nodded. "I want to feel something real. Once. Just. be here. With me."
He didn't require more words.
We hardly reached the bed before we were a mess of sheets and darkness, our clothes a distant heap on the floor. Each kiss, each touch, a memory and a query — do you still love me? Will this be enough?
And perhaps we both knew it wouldn't last. But for tonight, we let the world slip away.
Kael devoured me with his mouth and hands, tracing my skin as if it were holy land he'd been exiled from for far too long. I groaned his name when his lips followed down my belly, when he kissed the curve of my hips as a starving man. He stroked with intent, each touch intended to show me who we used to be — and who we were now when everything else did not stand in the way.
I told him back with my body, curling into him, pressing my nails into his back, speaking his name like a secret I didn't want to share. We moved like we hadn't been separated — no pause, no holding back, only hunger.
And when he was inside me, the rest of it disappeared. The past, the war, the fear — all of it incinerated in the heat between us.
He groaned slowly, as if he wanted to commit to memory the sensation of me. His lips grazed my temple, my cheek, my collarbone, reverent in a way that shattered something deep within me. I clasped him, legs wrapped tight around his waist, meeting thrust for thrust.
It wasn't sex.
It was grief, love, anger, yearning — all of it piling up like a storm.
"I never stopped loving you," he whispered in my hair, voice breaking. "Even when I was an idiot. Especially then."
My eyes stung, but I wouldn't cry.
I put my hands on his face instead and kissed him again — not soft this time, but hard, like maybe if I kissed him hard enough, I could push tomorrow out of my mind.
We broke together, panting and shaking, holding each other like it was the end. Because perhaps it was.
We didn't talk after.
The silence was heavy, but not uncomfortable. Just… complete.
Kael was lying next to me, arm slung over my hip, fingers drawing gentle circles on my skin. I wanted to commit the shape of his body against mine to memory, the soft movement of his breathing, the pressure of his being — so that I could keep it in my mind even when he left.
Because I knew that he would.
"I meant it," he whispered after an eternity of silence. "You don't have to return. I won't treat you as anything but my equal. But I'll wait. However long it takes."
I didn't reply. I couldn't.
Instead, I leaned against him, pressed my forehead into his chest, and closed my eyes.
Sleep arrived in fits, each dream infused with too much memory, too much pain. But I allowed myself to sleep. Tonight, if nothing else, I was not a weapon. I was not a queen. I was not the mother of a child who could possibly change the world.
I was simply… Scarlett.
And Kael was still the man who had the skill to touch my soul.