Page 80 of The Odds of You

I helped him fold the jacket up, and we both slid our fingers over the ashes, burying everything that had built us beneath the still-warm earth.

When we were finished, our fingers were linked together, and it was Aubrey who crawled across the ground and straddled me.

“I want to leave this place.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth.

“We’re already packing?—”

“No, I mean this city. This fucking coast. I want to go somewhere else. You said there were scientists out west. Maybe we should burn their building to the ground too.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes… eyes that were still wet and full of tears. “I just can’t. I can’t be here anymore. I can’t do this anymore. I need something new.”

“Aubrey.” He leaned in as I spoke, brushing salty kisses against my lips. “If you want to burn the entire world to the ground and leave it as nothing but ash, I’ll start the fire. If you want to kill every person who ever hurt you, I’ll be your weapon. Wherever you go, I’m with you.”

The words seemed to run straight through him, spark to life the fire that had burned out around us. He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me against him, pressing his mouth to mine. “Right now, I just need youhere.”

“You have me.”

He shoved me back, and my shoulders hitting the ground sent another wave of ash into the air around us. It was stillwarm—the fire had just burned out, and with the way heat was streaking through my body, I wondered if we were going to set it ablaze again.

Instead, I focused on the feel of his lips pressing against mine, the way he rocked and squirmed until his hands were pulling his shirt over his head and scrambling to yank mine free.

It didn’t matter that we were here in the middle of a burned down building, on top of everything in his life that had tried to hurt him—or maybe it did.

Maybe that was why he needed this.

I groaned when he yanked my pants down and grabbed my dick. A few quick strokes had me hard, and he leaned back long enough to pull his own cock free before he took us both in hand. My fingers joined his as we kneeled there on top of everything that made up who we were, who we’d been.

When we started to stroke in tandem, I knew this wasn’t really about sex. It wasn’t about pleasure, or lust. It wasn’t desire.

It was love—our own fucked-up brand of love, and I was going to take every minute of it I could. I dragged him down on top of me and pulled his mouth to mine again while he rutted, grinding our cocks together, chasing pleasure and release.

Freedom.

Chasing the heels of that somethingnew.

“No more collars.” He panted his demand against my mouth while his eyes blazed like foxfire. “Nomore weakness. No more past.” He gasped his next words out like they hurt—like pulling them from his chest was pulling some deep-seated thorn free so he could finally breathe. “Just me. Just you. Just us.”

Just us.

He didn’t give me a chance to answer. His mouth found mine again, and he kissed me with lips that trembled and a tongue that tasted salty from tears and bitter from the burned wood in the air.

And it was still the sweetest kiss I’d ever had.

Our bodies worked and surged until the cloud around us was a whipping, whirling thing, until we were both panting and clinging to each other—until the ash painted us both gray from the sweat on our bodies, coating our tongues and sealing our kiss with the memories and demons from Aubrey’s past finally laid to rest.

Finally, I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I cried out his name as my body clenched. Orgasm rolled through me like a tidal wave that left me screaming into his kiss, left his fingers clawing across my torso and painting my waist with four ragged stripes—new scars for our new life. Aubrey came when I ran my fingers up the length of the lacerations like he could feel it too.

A new beginning.

A new world, just for us.

He chased the edges of our pleasure with his hips until we were both trembling, until the air around us was nothing but kicked up ash—memories trapped between our bodies and smeared across our skin.

Finally, he collapsed against my chest. He was panting.

Crying…

Trembling as he held me.

And for the first time, I really felt like Aubrey was mine. No collar, no weakness… no past holding him back.

Just us and the ash on our tongues, sealing the promise of a future where, for the first time, I was his too.