Page 80 of BounBound By Scars

My heart tripped over itself, breath catching as his next words broke softly against my mouth. “Can I kiss those gorgeous lips of yours now?”

I didn’t answer—I launched.

No hesitation. No pause. My body moved on instinct, like it had been waiting for this moment far longer than my mind had admitted.

Kabir caught me instantly. One arm locked around my waist, the other cradling the back of my neck like I was something breakable. His grip was firm but reverent, grounding me in the middle of this emotional earthquake.

Finally.Finally.

I was kissing Kabir Gill.

Properly.

And it wasn’t soft.

It was fire. A desperate, clumsy, breathtaking kind of hunger. Years of tension. Of sleepless nights. Of missed chances and unspoken truths, all poured into a single devastating kiss. His lips were warm and aching against mine, moving like he was terrified this might vanish. That I might vanish.

And then his voice—wrecked, trembling—slipped between our mouths.

“Amelia…”

It shattered something inside me.

His breath hitched as our mouths met again, deeper this time, and he whispered like a prayer into the space between us.

“I’ve been dying for this,” he rasped. “I’ve been…”

My hands clutched his shirt like it was the only thing keeping me upright. “Me too.”

“Years, Lia. Years, I’ve wanted this. Thought of this. Every fucking day.”

I whimpered softly when his lips traced the corner of my mouth, his thumb brushing my jaw as if to ground himself in my skin.

“You’re not a dream, right?” he whispered, forehead against mine, voice breaking. “Becausebhagwan ki qasam… if I open my eyes and you’re not here—”

“You’re not dreaming,” I whispered as my fingers ran through his hair.

He kissed me again. Fiercer. Longer.

“Mine,” he choked out with a smile, like the word had been caged in his chest for a lifetime. “Even when you weren’t, you were mine.”

Kabir Gill’s kiss wasn’t just a promise. It was a reckoning. A confession. A breaking point.

This wasn’t a kiss you gave lightly. This was a kiss that rebuilt everything he thought he lost.

And when our teeth clashed and our breaths tangled, I felt it in my bones—

We were tangled together, hearts bare, souls surrendered.

This was it.

Me.

Him.

And the kind of love that hurt to hold, but hurt more to let go.

TWENTY

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