There is a kind of silence that lives between strangers—the silence of glances not yet held too long, of hands that haven't wandered far enough. It's the space just before the first touch, just before the first breath shared, and it hums with possibility. That was where we began. Not in chaos, not in drama, but in that charged stillness between wanting and having. A silence waiting to be broken by a moan, a whisper, or a name said softly against skin.

  I didn't know, then, how her voice would sound when she came apart. I didn't know how my name would taste on her tongue, or how her fingers would find every edge of me and smooth it down into something soft. I only knew that something about her unsettled the air around me. When Trina looked at me, I felt like a secret waiting to be uncovered—like a locked door she already had the key for.