Chapter 28
MILA
We spent the entire night in a kind of soft fever.
Not the frantic kind—no jagged edges, no desperate scrambling for more like we were afraid it would disappear if we blinked. It was slower than that. Deeper. As if the truth he’d given me had rewired something in both of us and the only way our bodies knew how to respond was to keep touching.
We dozed in each other’s arms. We woke with our mouths already finding skin. We talked in low voices that felt too intimate for daylight—Connor’s voice rough and quiet, mine steady in a way I wasn’t used to hearing. We said things that weren’t dramatic, but felt like vows, anyway.
“I’m here,” he told me at some point, his forehead pressed to mine, his hand splayed across my back like he was anchoring me to the bed.
“I know,” I whispered.
And every time I said it, I believed it more.
We made love again—sensual, unhurried, almost reverent.
Connor touched me like he was learning a language he’d been hungry for his whole life.
Like pleasure wasn’t just indulgence, but proof.
Proof that a body could hold tenderness and hunger at the same time.
Proof that connection didn’t have to be earned through suffering first.
He kissed me slowly until I forgot how to guard my reactions. Until every sound I made felt like permission instead of exposure.
And when he moved inside me, it was about joining. About choosing the same rhythm on purpose. About the steady press of his mouth against my shoulder as if he couldn’t stop reminding himself that I was real—here, alive, and still willing to be close to him after everything he’d told me.
After, he didn’t roll away.
He held me.
Not like a man clinging to something he didn’t deserve. Like a man who understood the weight of being trusted and intended to honor it with his entire body.
We talked again—about nothing and everything.
About how Paris sounded at night, how the city hummed even through thick walls.
About the residency, about élodie’s sharp calm and the way she could disarm people without raising her voice.
About my mother’s silences and Connor’s memories of his father cheering in the stands like love could be measured in decibels.
There were moments when Connor went quiet, the old vigilance flickering behind his eyes like a shadow crossing water.
And every time it happened, I didn’t rush him out of it.
I touched his cheek. I kissed his hand. I slid my fingers between his and held him there until his breath evened out again.
It was the strangest thing—how natural it felt.
How my body didn’t interpret his stillness as withdrawal. How I didn’t panic and try to fill the space. I could simply be in it with him, without the old reflex to make myself smaller so the moment stayed safe.
And it struck me how little the external details seemed to matter right now.
The ransacked apartment. The lingering unease of knowing someone had crossed that boundary.
Even the small, daily frustrations I’d been carrying for months—the way my French still came out clumsy and hesitant, how conversations sometimes left me nodding and smiling instead of fully participating.
None of it felt urgent in this moment. None of it felt like an obstacle.
I had the strangest, clearest sense that I could be happy anywhere, that place was suddenly negotiable. That as long as Connor was beside me—steady, present, choosing me back—the rest would arrange itself in time.
Safety, language, geography. Those were logistics. This was alignment.
Sometime in the deep stretch of night—when sleep came in fragments and our bodies kept finding each other without urgency—I found myself thinking about the call I’d made to my mother.
Not with anxiety. With something gentler.
The way her voice had sounded when I told her I was happy. The quiet acceptance in it.
Connor was half-asleep beside me when I said it aloud, my fingers tracing the slow rise and fall of his chest.
“I want you to meet her someday.”
His eyes opened fully then—not startled, just attentive.
“Your mom?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” I smiled faintly. “I don’t know when. Or how. But I want her to see me like this. Whole. Not managing anything. Not apologizing for taking up space.”
He shifted onto his side, propping himself up enough to look at me properly. His gaze moved over my face with that steady focus that always made me feel like he was listening even before I spoke.
“I’d like that,” he said. “When you’re ready.”
Not if. When.
I knew that men like Connor didn’t waste words. They weren’t built for long speeches. They spoke sparingly, deliberately, as if language itself carried weight they refused to misuse.
He wasn’t the kind of man who talked about the future to soothe or impress. He talked when something was decided. And the fact that he’d said when—so simply, so unguarded—told me more than a thousand reassurances ever could.
It was a quiet declaration that he saw me in his life beyond this city. I believed him completely. And I held that word carefully, like something precious, letting it warm me from the inside out.
We drifted back into sleep after that, tangled together in true, pure bliss.
Morning arrived quietly.
Paris light filtered through the curtains in pale gold bands, illuminating dust motes and the curve of Connor’s shoulder where my cheek rested. The city sounded distant—muffled traffic, a faint siren far away, footsteps echoing off stone somewhere below.
Connor was awake when I stirred, his arm loose around my waist, his hand resting low on my stomach like it belonged there.
“Morning,” he murmured.
I lifted my head, brushing my lips against his chest. “Morning.”
There was no rush to move. No scramble back into reality. We stayed there, exchanging soft kisses, hands roaming lazily, the connection between us humming like it hadn’t dimmed at all overnight.
When we finally rose, it was together.
The shower felt like an extension of the night—steam curling around us, water sliding over skin already too familiar to pretend to be new.
Connor washed my hair with the same quiet care he’d shown everything else, fingers massaging slowly, deliberately, as if the act itself was intimate rather than a means to an end.
I washed him in return, palms tracing muscle, relearning the geography of him in daylight. The broad plane of his chest. The subtle scars my fingers already recognized. The strength there—unapologetic, contained, like it existed in service rather than display.
He was devastatingly handsome in a way that didn’t soften with intimacy, only sharpened. Stripped of tension, stripped of armor, he looked even more dangerous for how calm he was.
God, you’re magnificent, I thought, the realization landing low and slow in my body.
He watched me through lowered lashes, something dark and knowing in his gaze, like he could feel exactly where my attention lingered. When his mouth curved just slightly, it wasn’t a smile meant to charm—it was a private acknowledgment.
“What?” he murmured.
I slid my hands over his shoulders, letting them linger there longer than necessary. “You’re unfairly attractive,” I said. “You know that, right?”
A quiet huff of breath left him, almost a laugh. “Only to you.”
“That’s not true,” I replied, dragging my palms down his arms, enjoying the way his muscles shifted beneath my touch. “But it’s especially true to me.”
Heat flared instantly—sharp and familiar. I was acutely aware of him then. Of the way his body responded to mine without him having to move at all. Of how turned on I was simply being this close, this unguarded, this chosen.
He leaned in, kissing my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. Each touch felt intentional, like he was reminding me that wanting didn’t have to rush itself to be powerful.
We stood under the spray, bodies clean and slick, steam still curling lazily around us. Connor’s palms settled on my hips, pulling me back against his chest. I felt him hard against the curve of my ass, and a soft laugh escaped me.
“Already?” I teased, tilting my head to the side so he could press a kiss to my throat.
“Always,” he murmured, lips brushing my wet skin. “But we have the whole day ahead … and tonight.”
The promise in his voice sent a shiver through me. I turned in his arms, facing him, water droplets clinging to his lashes and sliding down the planes of his chest. We both knew we needed to get out soon. But neither of us moved toward the door.
Instead, he guided me gently until my back met the tiled wall. “Let me take care of you one more time,” he said, voice low, eyes dark with the same tenderness that had undone me all night.
I nodded, parting my legs as he sank to his knees in front of me.
Water streamed down his shoulders and back as his hands slid up my thighs, parting them wider.
His mouth found me—warm, slow, devastatingly gentle.
The angle was intimate, exposing, perfect.
He licked me with long, unhurried strokes, tasting me like he had all the time in the world, even though we both felt the day tugging at us.
He pulled back just enough to look up at me, eyes fierce with want. “Fuck, Mila,” he rasped, voice rough with raw honesty. “I could live between your thighs.”
The words hit me low and hard. I’d been with men who treated this like a favor, something to endure or rush through, their reluctance a quiet humiliation I’d learned to ignore. Some had avoided it entirely, making me feel like my desire was too much, too messy, too inconvenient.
But Connor looked at me like I was a feast he’d been starving for.
“Not all men feel that way,” I whispered, my voice trembling with old ghosts and new wonder.