Page 31 of Love Is A Draw
Victor’s words drifted between them, unsteady but deliberate. “Clouds become fog when they fall to the ground.” The simplicity of the statement didn’t matter. He needed to say something, anything, to steady the… whatever this was building between them. His words meant nothing, and everything. They were for her. For him. For the narrow space between them.
He couldn’t see her; the cloud had erased the visible world, but he could feel her, and that set his pulse racing in a way he hadn’t expected. Was she smiling at his comment? The opaque walls of the cloud wrapped around them concealed her expression, but he adored her breath against his cheek, impossibly close and unmistakable.
Her breath wasn’t like the cool, damp touch of the cloud, nor like the heat that hissed in uneven bursts from the burner above, it felt soft, warm, intimate as it brushed his skin like a fine thread that wove itself into the very fabric of him. His chest heaved, his body frozen yet entirely alive.
He reached more tightly for her, his movements hesitant but driven by a force quieter and steadier than thought. He found her back first, the curve of it familiar now after he’ held her int he basket. His fingers curled lightly, hesitating at the faint dampness sticking to the fabric of her gown as though it mightstop him. But beneath the cloth, he felt her warmth, her life, and something unnamable and thrilling that pushed him further.
Still lost in the mist, invisible to his eyes, she mapped perfectly to every nerve in his body. Her breath mingled with his, tentative and trembling with something that mirrored the rush in his chest. He leaned in even further, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible, and his fingers brushed the line of her jaw. The softness of her cheek grounded him more than the basket beneath his feet.
She didn’t pull away, didn’t shift, and for one astounding moment, as though they were suspended entirely—not by ropes or tethers, but by something stronger and infinite.
Her breath hitched, audible now, and he froze.
“Victor,” Gail whispered quietly enough for his name to scatter between them on the wind. Two syllables. His name. There was no warning in it. Only permission.
His restraint shredded.
Victor cradled her jaw, his thumb brushing over soft skin, precious and almost impossibly fragile. The mist swallowed her features whole, but he knew her, every breath and shift of her weight. The air dared to press between them, but it could not take what was already his.
“Tell me,” he murmured, his forehead dipping close, his breath unsteady as he hovered there, the world between their lips thinner than parchment. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”
Her silence sent his heart tumbling, but then her own hand rose with trembling will. Her fingers grazed his chest, hesitant, searching, until they came to rest lightly at the center, over a heart pounding far too hard for his calm exterior.
“You’re not.” Although she spoke softer than the wind, her words still pierced him.
He closed what remained of the space between them, his lips meeting hers in a touch so achingly light it took him a moment toregister it. And then, like a spark catching dry kindling, the first moment ceded to the next.
The world stilled. The burn of the balloon’s flame faded into silence, the sway of the basket continued unnoticed. He was aware only of her, soft and impossibly real, her warmth dispelling every cold, every fear that had lingered at the edges of this chaotic, daring leap. Her lips parted against his, and for the first time in years, he believed something good might last.
It wasn’t a kiss that consumed. It didn’t demand or overwhelm. It grew, unfolding in layers that stole his restraint and left him entirely undone. The very softness of it, her warmth against the cold mist, sliced through him with more force than any tempest. She was tender, deliberate, and astonishingly honest, her lips pressing back against his with a confidence that faltered and built in equal waves.
The taste of her lingered faintly, sweet but grounded, like freshly bloomed honeysuckle amid the weight of rain. Victor deepened the kiss, shaping it carefully, drawing her closer as though their forms might merge, the mist between them burning away beneath an unstoppable heat.
Her sigh slipped between them, a sound that hooked his soul to the moment as surely as ropes to the basket beneath their feet. She leaned into him, her hands braving their way from his chest to clutch at the lapels of his coat, trembling slightly but steady enough to remind him she was here. She wasn’t running nor turning away from the one who’d stirred so much inside her.
His free hand swept up and down her back, the motion slow and almost reverent. His fingers mapped the slight dip of her spine, memorizing her shape in a way his eyes could not in the cloudy haze. He cupped her cheek again, deepening the kiss as her lips parted for him like a prayer answered.
The burner hissed above them, a sharp contrast to the softness of her, but he barely noticed it, nor the creak of theballoon ropes or the faint whistle of the wind. There was Gail, and only Gail, her lips silken, a revelation he hadn’t anticipated but knew, as sure as the sky opened, he wouldn’t forget.
“Gail,” he whispered against her mouth, her name half plea, half prayer. His forehead touched hers and his unsteady breath mingled with hers in the narrow space they left between their mouths. “You feel it. Tell me I’m not alone in this.”
She trembled a little when she answered, her lips brushing his with the movement. “You’re not.”
Her soft finality left him breathless. She opened her eyes, their gazes meeting, and the weight of the world dissolved into that fragile, ephemeral moment. Mist still clung around them, diffused light painting everything in softened tones, but as Gail gently closed her fingers over his coat in a motion meant to steady as much as to pull closer.
Victor realized clarity had nothing to do with sight.
“You’re more,” he said, raw and unguarded.
“More?” she asked, caught between disbelief and wonder.
Victor’s palm cupped her cheek, and his thumb brushed away a stray drop of dew that had settled there, or maybe it traced the shape she was leaving on his soul.
He leaned so close their breaths mingled once more. “More than anything I’ve known,” he finished, his voice cracking slightly on the words.
And as the balloon shifted upward, breaking free of the densest fog, ribbons of light pierced the cloud cover, illuminating her features piece by piece. The burn of the flame nestled above them hissed, and the air grew thinner, cooler, and clearer.
But Victor barely noticed. His hand slid downward to curl against her back, claiming her in the quietest of ways, his chest still racing, his mind full of this immutable fact: she wasn’t a fantasy anymore. She was real. And she had chosen to be here.
