For showing my mother mercy in death so she didn’t have to suffer …
For unbolting me from this anchor of guilt …
“I’m not the monster I thought I was, and neither are you.” There’s a flash of confusion in his eyes as I move toward him with intention of my own.
Unleashed.
I push onto my tippy-toes, thread my hands up his chest, around his neck, fingers tangling with the hair on the back of his head as I crush my lips against his.
Warm.
Blissfully warm.
Yet his body is a statue, arms rigid at his sides. Even his chest is still, as though he can’t bring himself to breathe.
I delve my fingers through his beard, tilt my head, and force his lips to part.
His energy shifts.
Shatters.
His arms bind around my body, tightening with each plunge of his tongue as he pours an agonized moan down my throat, into my chest. He pushes his hands through my hair, cupping my head and tugging us apart, forcing me to draw on air that’s vastly inadequate because it hasn’t come fromhim.
Brow buckled, he searches my eyes like he’s hunting through my hoard of trinkets, then makes a pained sound. He steals my breath with a tender kiss that’s deep and slow. That sinks into my soul and tastes every bruise. Every ache.
Every slice of pain.
Zings of pleasure pulse through me.
Greedily, I paw at his powerful form, tracing the exquisite expanse of his back, trailing my hands down, fingers delving past the waistband of his tight pants.
I want him to take me.
Devour me.
I want him to eat my soul and spit it out in a heap that can never be pieced together by anyone but him.
Another pained groan, and he grips my cheeks, tilting my head back to plant a kiss on my forehead. “Stop …”
My gaze snaps up to meet his.
“Why?” I heave through battered breaths, his chest rising and falling at the same voracious pace.
“Because I’m about to rip into you so fast you’ll cease to know where I end and you exist.”
I whimper, my knees almost giving way as a hungry warmth thumps between my thighs. “What if Iwantthat?” I dare to whisper.
Speaking my truth to the stars, wondering if they’ll whisper back.
For a moment,nothing.Nothing but him and I as we compare our wounds through a single look.
“There’s still so much you don’t know, Orlaith.”
“I don’t care,” I say earnestly.
Nothing could change the way I feel.
For him.
