Fuck.
My eyes start to burn, but I’ve already cried too much with this man. I’m not going to do it again. I’m not going to be the emotional girl I was when I was fifteen and he rejected me. I’m not going to be the girl who let that rejection spiral into such intense emotions that I couldn’t even be in the same room as him. I’m not going to let myself be that girl who was secretly in love with Connor McBride as a freshman in high school.
Instead, I focus on the feeling of him inside me…
On the way the head of his cock catches in that perfect spot as I rock against him…
On those flutters of scorching, electric pleasure that wash through me as I grind down on him…
On the way his strong, sure hands at my hips help lift me, help us move as I struggle to keep my emotions and rhythm steady.
The heat centering in my core grows, the throbbing, pulsating need unbearable, and I start to lose my ability to keep moving. Only his strong hold on me keeps us going.
“That’s it, Firefly.” He nips at my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth greedily for a second before releasing it with a delicious tingle of pain. “Come for me.”
I press my forehead against his, my breathing erratic, my heart thundering against his where our chests press together, and when I finally come, it isn’t a slow burn, just a sudden burst into a raging inferno, spreading through my entire body, licking across my skin.
A tear slips from my eye, and Connor kisses it away as he presses his feet down into the bed and thrusts up into me, maintaining the rhythm I lost as my body jerks against his.
He picks up the pace.
His movements frantic.
His breath heavy and uneven.
Every muscle strains in his legs, his chest, his shoulders, his neck…and as he buries his face against me and comes deep inside me, the groan that falls from his lips is a mix of anguish and relief.
I collapse against him, my face pressed to his slick skin.
Our hearts beat in time with each other as we both struggle to regain our breaths, and he wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly against him, keeping our bodies locked together.
That’s how we remain until I finally fall asleep again in the arms of the man I’ve hated for most of my life…
The one who makes me question everything.
17
CONNOR
I’ve hiked this path so many times that I could’ve done it easily last night in the dark. But in the thick pre-dawn mist blanketing the trees, a painful sense of regret for leaving Raven this morning settles squarely on my shoulders, so I can only imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t stayed.
We never would have had that.
Whatever that was last night.
It was different from the other times we’d been together.
More intense. More intimate.
Just…more.
That made it far harder than I thought it would be to wake up with her draped across me and climb out of that bed I shared with her, the only place I’ve found any real peace since everything went down, and to head back to the place where everything feels wrong. To a homestead that doesn’t seem like home anymore. To a place where my brothers look at me like I’m a different person than the one they’ve known their entire lives.
Maybe they should.
Because I am.
No one can take lives like that and ever be the same.
