Thankingme?
As Shay wrapped her legs around my waist, fingers digging into the muscles at my back, I realized even a blood sacrifice wouldn’t be enough. I could leave the bodies of hundreds at her altar and the sacrifice would never reach what she’d given me.
“I’m starting to like you,” she blurted.
I laughed. “I hope so.” I thrust deeper to punctuate my point.
But Shay stilled.
I paused. “Shay?”
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t be attached. I?—”
I crushed my lips against hers, cutting off whatever fear was about to steal her away.
Shay’s nails dug into my neck, her whimpers heating my lips as she melted back into me. She was close to an orgasm. Her cunt gripped me. I held my own orgasm back, muscles tight. I wasn’t coming. Not until I felt her flood my cock.
She was afraid of becoming attached?
I was more than attached. This had always been more than sex for me.
I kissed her deeper, thrusting my tongue desperately into her mouth, as the realization flooded my senses.
I love her.
I think I’ve loved her from the beginning, when she was a siren on the other side of my phone. When she shared the darkness she hid. When she matched my loneliness.
But I couldn’t say that. Not when we were allowed only this one night.
Not when I was still lying to her about the very bloody reason we could never have more than one night.
“I’m attached, too, Shay,” I said against her lips.
She came undone, spasming beneath me, groaning into my mouth, crying out in a way that made me very fucking glad to be alone in the mountain.
Those noises were fuckingmine.
Then I followed, groaning into her neck with a body-racking, shuddering release.
A few moments of stillness followed. Breathing in the scent of Shay, a soft yet somehow earthy smell, like lilacs at night.
Then I lifted my head, finding her eyes. All the walls she’d built had shattered and crumbled. She matched my gaze. Bright-eyed. Vulnerable.
The shared realization suspended in the air between us, pulsing and shimmering mirrorlike.
This was supposed to be temporary. It couldn’t ever be more.
But inevitably, ithadbecome more.
With the same inevitability, it would end.
chapter
thirty-five
SHAY
Calder dragged his hand between my shoulder blades, up and down, and I drew circles on his pectoral.
