He’s quiet for a long moment, and I can feel his breath on my lips and the tension coiled in his body, like he’s bracing for the worst.
“Before you came to Blaze, I was disappearing.” The words come out slow, like he’s pulling them from somewhere rusty. “I was becoming cold and empty, capable of things that terrified me.”
Miles. The assassin.
I think it, but I don’t say it. His implication is clear enough.
“After four years of watching everyone around me live their lives while I rewound time again and again, redoing conversations until I got them right and erasing mistakes before anyone knew I’d made them, I thought I’d lost the ability to feel anything real. Nothing in my life was permanent, because every moment was a draft I could revise.”
The ache in my chest spreads.
“Then you showed up,” he continues. “Chaotic, impulsive, and electrifying things by accident. You looked at me like I was a puzzle you couldn’t wait to solve.”
“I still can’t solve you.” I manage a watery smile. “You’re very confusing.”
“You made me want to feel again.” His arms wrap tightly around me, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. “You reminded me what it’s like to be alive.”
“You keep me alive too.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Before I got here, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life alone. I thought I wasn’t enough, and that maybe I deserved it.”
Logan pulls back enough to look at me. His gray eyes are dark in the dim cabin, but still as fierce as ever.
“You deserve everything,” he says. “And I’m going to spend as long as I can proving it to you.”
The words settle over me like a blanket, warm and heavy. Because no one’s ever said that to me before. Not my parents, who wanted me to be someone else. Not my ex, who replaced me the moment I stopped being convenient. Not even Oliver, who was kind but never saw me the way Logan does—like I’m not just enough, but more than he ever expected to deserve.
My fingers find the rings on the chain against his chest. His breath catches, and the sound unravels the last thread of restraint I was pretending to hold onto.
One second we’re looking at each other in the dark, and the next his lips are on mine, his fingers sliding into my hair.
Electricity sparks between us.
Logan’s whole body goes rigid.
“Jade.” My name comes out strangled, and his eyes go dark. It’s that same hungry look from when I shocked him on deck and his veins lit up silver beneath his skin.
So, I allow the electricity to flow, constant and humming, and suddenly we’re a tangle of limbs and desperate hands as our clothes peel off. I keep the electricity flowing the entire time, a steady current that pulses between us everywhere we touch.
Every time a spark travels through him, his body shudders, his breath catches, or his fingers dig into my hips. And there it is again—that silver glow beneath his skin, tracing the path of his veins as if his circulatory system is lighting up from the inside.
“More,” he says, the word bitten out through gritted teeth. “Don’t stop.”
So, I don’t.
I let the electricity pulse in waves. They’re not the wild, explosive surges from two nights ago on deck. Instead, I let it pulse through my fingertips in a steady, controlled current.
His hands shake where they grip me, and his breathing goes ragged.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says, his forehead dropping to my shoulder.
“I think I do.”
I send a pulse of electricity through my palms where they rest on his shoulders, and his whole body jerks, his head tilting back as light crawls up his neck.
“Jade.” The way he says my name is rough and guttural, and when he pushes into me, I let the electricity surge through every point of contact, watching his face as the sensation crashesthrough him. “This is different from last night,” he says. “This is?—”
“Constant,” I finish. “I’m keeping it going.”
His arms shake where they brace on either side of my head, like I’ve plugged him into a power grid. His skin’s flushed, his pupils blown, and every muscle in his body’s trembling with the effort of staying controlled.