Page 460 of Bad Prince
I’ve never been with anyone who made me want to.
The words still hang between us.
Not awkward.
Not fragile.
Sacred.
The city glides by outside in dark, glossy fragments—wet streets, glowing windows, old stone, sea-black sky. Inside the limo, everything is velvet and low light and the kind of silence that doesn’t need filling.
I keep looking down at my hands-still shaking.
Tristan lifts one of them slowly, brings it to his mouth, and kisses my knuckles one by one without taking his eyes off me.
The gesture is so tender it nearly undoes me all over again.
“Still shaking,” he murmurs.
I try to smile.
“A little.”
His thumb strokes softly over the inside of my wrist where my pulse jumps helplessly under his skin.
“We don’t have to do anything tonight except breathe,” he says quietly. “You know that, right?”
The tears sting again immediately.
Because even now with all the heat between us and the confession and the years and that look in his eyes like he’s already halfway wrecked—he gives me gentleness first.
Choice first.
I nod.
“I know.”
He studies my face for a long second, making sure I mean it.
Then he lifts my hand to his chest and covers it there.
His heart is hammering.
Not steady.
Not calm.
Not controlled the way the rest of him looks.
Wild.
The realization moves through me like warmth.
“You’re shaking too,” I whisper.
A crooked, helpless little smile touches his mouth.
“Maybe a little.”
