Her back pressed to the glass of the window, and he rubbed the head of his arousal down her slit.
“What if someone sees?” she whispered, tits heaving with each breath, nipples so delectably rosy he could hardly keep from devouring them.
“Let them see,” he said, and he pushed himself inside her, watched her eyes widen and glass over. He pushed his hips up, and she gasped a curse, clawed for purchase on his back.
He groaned at the feel of it, deep within her again. All of her surrounding him.
“Lord, I’m a weak man when it comes to you.” He pulled out slowly, to the edge, then rammed in again, right to the hilt. Her legs squeezed at either side of his abdomen.
“Fuck,” she cursed, her head falling back to the glass.
Patrick pulled her chin down, so that she could see where they were reflected in the mirror, his whole body at her disposal, bending to her will.“You’ll keep your eyes open,” he said. “And watch what you do to me.”
He took her without apology then, pounding into her over and over without mercy, her mouth hinged open in that breathless O, her moans growing louder and louder each time he pushed inside. “Patrick,” she said, her cheeks reddening, scandalized. But moments later, she murmured, “More.” Then it came louder, something awakening inside her.“More.”
He pushed her thighs back, angled her to his advantage, growled in her ear all the ways she drove him to madness with nothing more than her presence. He told her she was the strongest person he’d ever known, ever would know, and that he promised… hepromisedthey’d find what they were owed. He’d restore what was taken.
In answer, she kissed him, unrestrained, pulling him closer, her body undulating and meeting his with every thrust.
The window rattled, their pace increased, and he drove inside her like a man possessed, felt the walls of her sex compress around him in response.
And he exalted in the knowledge that this intensity between them had not been taken with everything else. That some of what they’d built in Kenton had remained. He imagined a time and place where the tethers of their souls had somehow restored. Coalesced in the heat of her, it did not seem like such a wild fantasy.
Time became meaningless. Beyond the window, the sun was toppling over roofs. Somewhere in the Trench, the infantry were circling, closing in.
Patrick had forgotten it all.
“Patrick, I need to—” Her body was keening, rising.
“Just a little longer, darlin’,” he told her. “You can take it.”
Her thighs squeezed around him once more, her moans increasing in volume.
He felt heat burst in his lower abdomen, his own climax swelling in response to her, back arched, hips rolling, completely detached from reality.
He reached down to where they were joined and pressed the pad of his thumb to her clit. She became frantic, her eyes pinning to his.“Patrick!”
His mouth came over hers so that he could swallow her release, taste all that fire she was now made of, just like him.
She was burning alive, the walls of her cinching tighter, tighter, until she exploded, every muscle in her body taut with pleasure, his name a prayer on her lips. Unable to stand the rapture of it, Patrick allowed his own release to follow.
They came back to themselves slowly, but fused, their limbs still wrapped tightly. He did not allow her feet to touch the floor again, as though she might descend through it and disappear, and she didn’t try to detach herself. She only wrapped her arms around him, shaking slightly. Puffs of breath fanned over his shoulder. “I love you,” she said again, then pressed her lips against his collarbone and stayed there.
Eventually, Patrick took her tenderly back to the bed and laid her down. He covered them both with a blanket as though he could hold the rest of the world at bay with it.
Their mouths stayed connected for a long while after, neither willing to allow the havoc of the night to rush in. With their lips sealed, nothing that ought to be said could escape.
In his mind, whirring like a siren, Nina told him again and again that she loved him. And it felt like a salve, a drug.
A trap and a liberation.
In her sleep, she said his name.
Wide awake, he whispered that he loved her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINENINA
Harland took a day to secure whatever boat passage could be found between Scurry and the surrounds of Kenton Hill. In the interim, I pretended I was in some other room with Patrick, perhaps the cherry blossom room in Colson & Sons, my face pressed to Patrick’s chest for most of the day, and neither of us willing to leave the realm we’d carved. Every so often, the need would eclipse me again, and he sated it as though helpless to resist. Sometime near midday, he laid his ear to my bare sternum and said, “It never slows.” I could feel it, too, the pounding of my heart. “One day it’s gonna break out and make a run for it.”
