She laughs. A roaring, beautiful laugh. Jesus fuck. What were we talking about again?
“She tried to pay me off to get an abortion, Ev.”
An image of Rune pops into my head. The thought of him never being born, not being here to spread his joy and his light? Fuck. It literally makes my chest hurt. But am I surprised? No.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Leo.” I step into her again and again and again until she is up against the wall.
“But I’m not fucking sorry that I found you. I’m not fucking sorry that your stubborn little heart is going to have to learn to love me again. Just like the first time, I am going to be relentless. I’m not fucking sorry that you are mine, even if you don’t want to be. Always mine.”
“Ev—”
“Don’t. Don’t say anything. Just kiss me. Please. Let’s deal with this fuck ton of trauma tomorrow. Tonight, just be my Leo again. Heal me. Revive me. Crash into my dull world like you did all those years ago. Please, Leo. Take me.”
She is hesitant at first. But then her insecurity and doubts clear like the clouds and her light shines again, her wings unfold, and she takes flight. My pretty bird.
Her hands wrap around my jaw, and she slams her lips to mine. It’s a collision of stars. A fucking supernova. Home.
She is decadent in the way she moves her tongue, her hips, her body colliding with my own in the most devastating dance.
I pick her small, luscious frame up, wrapping her thick thighs around my waist, and carry her to the bed. The dominant in me is ready to tie her ass up and fuck her till she forgets her own damn name, but we can save that for later. My gut tells me that tonightshe needs me to be gentle. She needs reassurance that despite her mistake, I am and always will be hers.
I lay her down gently on the bed, my own large frame shielding her. When I run my hands under her soft T-shirt, she gasps, music to my ears. Her cold hands running under my own shirt send shivers across my body, and my muscles tense under the pads of her fingertips. Her touch completely unique, like nothing I have ever experienced. She lights me on fire.
I move my lips from hers to her neck, and I inhale her cinnamon scent. Fuck, I missed this. Her body under me after so long seems like a dream. “Fuck. Don’t wake me, Leo. Let me live in this dream with you.”
“I’m here, Ev. I’m here, with you.” Her light voice filters into my ears as her hands wrap around the nape of my neck, and she pulls me so our foreheads are touching.
“I love you, Ev, and I am so sorry for—”
I silence her with my mouth. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to relive any of this right now. I just want her.
I lean up and remove my shirt then pull hers off as well. She is laid out in front of me, watching me, waiting for…what? An assessment? A judgment? She will find none.
Her body is even more perfect now than it was last time I devoured it. There are small stretch marks on her belly, and her breast are slightly larger, also decorated in the beautiful marks that tell me she carried and brought a life into this world, nourishing my son with her body. It’s spiritual, the way I want to worship her.
“Fuck, Leo.”
She misunderstands my meaning. “I know. I don’t look the same.” Her voice holds insecurities, doubt, hatred for the body she lives in.
“I never thought you could be any more perfect, but I was wrong. You’re a fucking goddess.”
Her stormy eyes meet mine, and I can’t help the smirk that graces my face. I’m ready to consume her, and she knows it. She wiggles her hips against me, and I’m a fucking goner.
I lean over her and begin nipping at her breasts, her soft belly. I place kisses to her scars, the old and the new. Her cesarean scar paints a story across her lower abdomen, and I run my tongue along it, feeling the ridge that the scalpel left. Her scar is not a perfect line. It’s shaky, messy—left in urgency to save my son’s life.
I grasp her leggings and lace thong in my hands and tug them off. I’m left in jeans, and she is bare under me. Just as she should always be.
When I lean down, hooking her thighs over my shoulders, my mouth inches from her center, my nirvana, I can’t help the moan that escapes at being home again.
“Ev, please.”
“What is it that you want, pretty bird?”
A bite into her full thigh.
“You know what I want.”
A bite to her other thigh.
