Page 125 of The Thief
The words don’t just reach my ears; they burn their way into my chest. This isn’t a vow. It’s a truth he carries in every fiber of his being. I feel it in the way he looks at me, like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to the world.
“Show me,” I whisper, my voice shaking.
“What?”
“Show me how much I mean to you.”
His eyes darken, not with lust, but with something deeper. Reverence. Possession without cruelty. Worship laced with grief.
“Alastríona—”
"I need to feel something other than grief and guilt. I need to remember what it's like to be loved instead of used."
He doesn’t answer with words.
He answers with his body.
His mouth finds mine, gentle at first, then deeper as I respond. This isn't the desperate hunger from before; this is something softer, more reverent.
“You’re everything to me,” he breathes against my mouth. “Everything good. Everything worth fighting for.”
His hands begin to move with a purpose I’ve never felt before; slow, deliberate, unbearably tender. He doesn’t strip me bare in haste. He worships his way there.
When he peels my shirt from me, he does it like he’s unwrapping something sacred. His gaze never leaves mine.
“So beautiful,” he whispers, voice cracking. “God, you don’t even see it, do you?”
I shake my head, already trembling from the weight of his words. His fingers skim up my sides, over my ribs, lingering just under the swell of my breasts.
“Let me show you,” he murmurs. “Let me teach you how precious you are.”
He kisses down my throat, slow and warm, leaving reverent trails with his mouth. Every spot he touches ignites under his care, but it’s more than arousal. It’s love. It’s a plea.
“You’re safe with me,” he whispers again, like a mantra. “Always.”
“I know.”
"Do you feel it? How much I love you?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because I need you to remember this when the world gets dark. I need you to remember that you matter.”
He traces his fingertips over my healing bruises with excruciating gentleness, as if he’s afraid of hurting me with even the memory of pain. I’m completely bare by the time he lays me back, and when he looks at me, I see it—all of it.
Love. Hunger. Awe.
“You’re perfect,” he says, not as a compliment, but as a conviction. “To me, you are.”
He lowers his body until he reaches my thighs. He spreads them open, and within seconds I'm moaning his name as his tongue slides slowly along my slit. I gasp, hips jerking, but his hands hold me firm, not in domination, but in reassurance.
“Stay with me,” he whispers into me. “Let me make you feel everything.”
He brings me to the edge with maddening precision, tongue and fingers coaxing me right to the brink, again and again, only to pull back at the last moment.
“You're so sensitive. So responsive.” His voice is low, wrecked. “You have no idea how beautiful you are like this.”
I sob his name, hands gripping his shoulders, legs trembling from the intensity.
