Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass of the penthouse, the ocean is a blur of distant purple storm, muted and far away thirty floors below.
Locke stays buried deep inside me, his weight resting heavy and warm over my back, his chest heaving against my spine. Every pulse of his heart reverberates straight through my ribs, matching the frantic, unsteady rhythm of my own.
In this moment, there's only Locke, only me, only us. The three words we uttered for the first time less than thirty minutes ago are still hanging in the air between us like a physical charge, raw and terrifying in their honesty.
I love you.
We haven't just crossed an emotional line tonight; we’ve completely burned the bridge behind us.
"Zara," he says, his voice rough, gravelly, and stripped completely bare of his usual
