"Aria, what else matters if what we feel for each other feels enough? Do we have to announce it to everyone for it to feel enough?" Hillary murmurs, his voice low, soft, almost desperate.
His lips graze Aria's neck in a fleeting touch that makes her whole body arch involuntarily.
The contact sparks through her like lightning, sharp and electric, spreading in waves from the place where his mouth brushes her skin to every corner of her being.
"Can you actually live without this?" he whispers again, "Because I cannot." His lips hover upward, tracing slowly until they find their way near hers, so close that his breath mingles with hers.
He doesn't kiss her yet, but the tension between them is unbearable. The space is thin, fragile, and charged, and Aria feels her willpower collapsing.
She doesn't even have the nerve to push him away anymore.
