The firelight catches the silver band on her finger, a thin, cold gleam against the warm flush of her skin. Tom looks at it, then at Fred. Her expression isn’t the placid curiosity from before. It’s sharper. Focused. Like she’s listening to a voice only she can hear.
“It’s talking to me,” she says. Her voice is still that warm, husky murmur, but there’s a new weight to it.
Fred’s hand tightens on the booklet. “What is it saying?”
“Not words. More like… a pressure. In my chest. Behind my eyes.” She brings her hand—her small, slender hand—up to her temple. “It wants me to look at you.”
She does. Her green eyes hold his, and the look in them isn’t Tom’s old playful challenge. It’s something softer. Yearning. It makes the air in the room feel thick, hard to pull into his lungs.
“It’s pushing a feeling onto me, Fred. A really specific one. About you.”
He takes a step back. His heel bumps the leg of an armchair. “What feeling?”
“Love.” The word hangs in the space between them, simple and devastating. “Romantic love. The kind that makes your stomach flutter. The kind that makes you want to… belong to someone.”
She takes a step forward, closing the distance he tried to make. The torn hem of her jeans brushes his shin. The scent of her—warm skin, faint sweat, something sweet like vanilla from his grandmother’s old soap—washes over him.
“But here’s the thing,” she whispers, her gaze dropping to his mouth, then back to his eyes. “The ring is shoving the feeling at me. Like a command. But the… the receiver for it? That was already here. In me. Waiting.”
Her hand comes up, not to touch him, but to hover near his cheek. He can feel the heat radiating from her palm.
“All those times we’d crash in the same tent after hiking. All those late nights fixing your piece-of-shit car. I’d watch you, focused, your brow all scrunched up. And I’d think… I wonder what that’s like. To be the girl who gets to kiss that worry off your face.”
Fred’s breath catches. It’s not a gasp. It’s a full stop. His whole body goes still.
“The ring is just turning the volume up,” she continues, her voice dropping even lower, a confidential rumble in the firelit room. “Making it impossible to ignore. Making it… the point of everything. The end goal.”
She finally touches him. Her fingertips graze his jaw, a feather-light contact that sends a jolt straight down his spine. Her touch is sure. Not hesitant like his had been.
“It wants me to be your wife, Fred.”
He shakes his head, a tiny, frantic motion. “Tom, that’s the book. That’s the… the lesson. It’s making you say that.”
“Is it?” Her thumb strokes the stubble on his chin. “Because the thought doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels like a door I always wanted to walk through, and someone just finally turned on the light inside.”
She leans in. Her full breasts press against his chest through the thin, strained fabric of her t-shirt. He can feel the firm peaks of her nipples against him. The heat of her body seeps through his flannel.
“I don’t mind the thought,” she breathes against his lips. Her breath is warm and smells of the red wine they’d shared hours ago, in a different lifetime. “I really, really don’t mind it.”
Her mouth finds his.
It’s not a question. It’s an answer.
Her lips are softer than he could have imagined. They move against his with a practiced ease that steals the strength from his knees. One of her hands slides into his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands, holding him to her. The other rests flat against his pounding heart.
She kisses him deeply, hungrily. A small, desperate sound escapes her throat and vibrates into his mouth. It’s the sound of a want finally, finally being fed.
Fred doesn’t kiss her back. Not at first. He’s frozen, a statue in the grip of a force of nature. But his body betrays him. His hands come up, hovering at the lush curve of her waist, trembling. The heat of her skin burns through the torn denim.
She pulls back just enough to speak, her lips brushing his with each word. “See? The ring says love him. My body says yes. My heart…” She takes his trembling hand and presses it over her left breast again, under her shirt this time. Her bare skin is silk and heat. “My heart is already yours. It has been. I was just wearing the wrong shape to show you.”
Her heartbeat is a frantic, living drum under his palm. It matches the wild rhythm of his own.
She kisses him again, and this time, something in Fred cracks open. A dam of shock and denial gives way. A low groan rumbles in his chest. His fingers curl against her ribs, pressing into the soft give of her flesh. His mouth opens under hers, and he tastes her—wine, warmth, a hint of salt.
It’s a surrender. He feels it happen in his bones.
Tom feels it too. A victorious, hungry sigh leaves her. She grinds her hips against him, and he feels the hard ridge of his own arousal meet the soft, yielding heat between her thighs. Even through their clothes, the contact is electric, blinding.
She breaks the kiss, panting. Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide. “The lesson is love,” she murmurs, her forehead resting against his. “And I am an exceptionally fast learner.”
Her hands go to the buttons of his flannel. Her fingers, now deft and delicate, make quick work of them. She pushes the fabric open, palms sliding over the plain cotton of his t-shirt beneath, mapping the tense planes of his chest and stomach.
She looks up at him, her gaze unwavering. “Do you want to see how fast?”