Page 198 of Legacy
“Yes.”
His scent.
Dios, this scent.
It’s something that always smelled like danger and home at once.
It wraps around me, grounding and dizzying.
We stay like that for a moment, just holding each other while the day stirs awake.
The wind tugs gently at the balcony curtains. The city hums below. But up here, in his arms, the world is quiet.
He pulls away first, slow and reluctant, but his hands don’t leave me.
They slide down to my waist, fingers splayed wide.
His eyes find mine, searching for something only I can give.
“Did you see the spread?” he asks, voice dipping lower, roughened with emotion he doesn’t try to hide.
“I did,” I answer, smiling softly up at him. “For me?”
He shrugs, but the smirk that curves his mouth doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Thought you might be hungry,” he says.
There’s a quiet, raw honesty in it—like he’s still learning how to care for me, one trembling step at a time.
My heart swells, too big for my chest.
I rise onto my toes and press a kiss to his cheek, feeling the faint scratch of stubble, the lingering warmth of his skin under my lips.
“Thank you,” I whisper against him.
His arms tighten around me immediately, pulling me flush to him again, like my gratitude cuts deeper than he knows what to do with.
He leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes, breathing me in.
I feel the slow, measured pull of his breath against my ribs.
The way his fingertips curl into the fabric of my shirt like he’s anchoring himself to me too.
I study him through my lashes; the man I spent years trying to forget.
The man who never really left me.
The face I once hated myself for loving.
The face I see even when I close my eyes.
“I think...” he says quietly, voice roughened and low, “I think we should go inside.”
I nod, small but steady.
A promise made more to myself than to him.
I take his hand.
