Chapter 74

• Something breaks inside me.
• I hurl myself to him and slide my arms around his heavy and beaten body. I hold him tightly, as firmly as I can. He holds me too, wrapped around me with so much desperation and need as if he is scared to death, that if he did not, I might evaporate in thin air. No thoughts come to my mind. I don’t allow myself to do anything but hold him. I breathe in his scent; I breathe all of him. Our chests are flushed, and not an inch of space is left out.
• He begins to rock; I rock with him. His lips delicately graze across the exposed skin of my neck, I let him. My fingers slip through the silk of his hair, knotting around the short strands, combing them tenderly.