ARIA
Kael showed up at my door eighteen minutes before the hearing with his shirt half-unbuttoned and eyes that said he'd been barely restraining himself for the last five hours and fifty-two minutes.
I didn't ask how he knew the exact timing or whether he'd counted every minute the way I had, just pulled him inside and kissed him like we had eighteen minutes instead of a lifetime and I needed to make every second count because there was a very real possibility this hearing ended with us separated permanently.
His hands found my waist and lifted me, my back hitting the wall hard enough that I felt it, and I wrapped my legs around him while his mouth moved from mine to my throat to the bite mark he'd left that was already scarring into permanent proof of what we were to each other.
"We have the hearing," I said while my hands worked at his belt because my brain understood we had limited time but my body had other priorities.
