Chapter 7

The silence was the first thing I noticed, heavy and velvet, wrapping around us like a heavy duvet. Then came the light, soft and golden, filtering through the semi-sheer curtains of the hotel suite we had claimed as a temporary sanctuary after the planetarium’s late-night closing. The air still held a faint, electric charge, a residue of the humidity and the heavy breathing that had filled the small, sterile room just hours before. I shifted slightly, wincing as a pleasant ache radiated through my hips, a delicious reminder of how thoroughly he had claimed me. My head rested against the broad expanse of his chest, the steady thump of his heart beneath my ear serving as a metronome for my own slowing pulse. I didn’t open my eyes immediately. I let the memory of the night linger, replaying the way his hands had moved over my skin, the way his voice had dropped to that low, commanding register that made my knees weak. *Baby girl.* He had said it again and again, a mantra against the backdrop of the starry dome above us. The irony wasn’t lost on me. We had been under the simulated cosmos, surrounded by the grandeur