~ 🖤
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The morning light was cruel.
It poured through the curtains like it had a right to be there — like it wasn't trespassing on the wreckage of the night before.
Maya lay still in the tangled sheets, her skin sore, lips bruised, heart hammering too fast for a body that wasn't moving.
Elias's arm was thrown across her waist, heavy and possessive. His face buried in her hair. Breathing in her like she was oxygen.
Like she was his.
And she was.
That was the terrifying part.
She hadn't just given him her body. She hadn't just whispered the words in the dark.
She'd meant them.
I'm yours.
Now, there was no turning back.
> "You're awake," Elias murmured, voice low, sleep-heavy.
He didn't ask.
He knew.
Maya didn't move. Just nodded slightly.
> "Good," he whispered, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. "Don't leave."
His grip tightened — not painfully. Just enough to make it clear it wasn't a suggestion.
> "I wasn't going to," she said quietly.
> "You thought about it."
A pause.
Then he added: "I'd find you."
She swallowed.
He shifted beside her, propping himself up on one elbow to look at her face. His hair was a mess. His eyes — still dark, still hungry.
> "Do you regret it?" he asked.
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
> "No," she said finally. "But I don't know what it means now."
> "It means you're mine," he said simply.
> "And what are you?" she asked, eyes sharp.
He didn't hesitate.
> "Yours."
The words should've comforted her.
But they didn't.
Because the way he said it — it didn't sound like love. It sounded like devotion. The kind that burns. The kind that kills.
She sat up slowly, wrapping the sheet around her chest. He didn't stop her, but his eyes never left her — tracking her every movement like she might run at any second.
> "Elias… what happens now?" she asked.
He didn't blink. Didn't flinch.
> "You stay. With me."
> "And if I don't want to?"
His jaw flexed.
> "You do."
She met his eyes. "Do you even love me?"
Silence.
Then he leaned forward and kissed her shoulder — soft this time. Almost reverent.
> "I feel you," he whispered. "In my bones. In the parts of me that stopped working when Mira died."
Her heart twisted.
> "You don't love me because of me," she whispered. "You love me because you lost her."
> "No." His voice was steel now. "I hated you because I lost her. I love you because you survived. Because you didn't die with her. And I hated that, too."
He looked broken then. But not in a way that begged for comfort.
In a way that said: If I can't have you, I'll break you too.
> "I don't know who I am anymore," she whispered.
> "You're mine," he said again. "That's all you need to know."
And just like that, the sheet was pulled from her, and she was under him again — not to make love.
To remind her.
To bind her.
To keep her.
Because Elias didn't know how to love softly.
And Maya didn't know how to leave anymore.
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