Those fucking glorious words. It had been weeks of torture. Weeks of pulling out, only to wish I’d stayed inside. She drove me crazy with her needy moans.
I couldn’t contain the low growl building in my throat. I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to hold back. I couldn’t hold back. I needed to come in her again. I needed her to know she was mine.
My cock swelled, skin stretching tight. I thrust and thrust, building up my arousal, letting every stroke of her lips sliding past me send a euphoric sensation throughout my entire body, until my balls tightened and I was just about to come.
But she came first.
Hearing her shattered moans into the frosted morning air, feeling her hot skin against mine… the way she backed herself into me chasing more… there was no getting out of this. Everything I’d held in released with a force that only a man restrained by a broken heart could ever understand.
I pumped inside of her until I was drained, filling her so full it pushed past my dick and out of her.
With my arms wrapped around her, I just held her, breathed her in, her soft skin against mine, and watched her float down from her orgasm.
God, I was never letting her go. I wanted this every day for the rest of my life. I wanted what was mine. I wanted her.
“I love you, Max.”
“Mmm… I love you too,” she hummed.
We stayed together, my dick still inside. Her ass pressing against me. We breathed each other in, taking in each other’s scent. Claiming what belonged to us.
“Max, I have a question for you.”
“What is it?” She leaned into me.
“Will you?—”
A sharp heat slammed through my back and swelled deep in my chest.
Then I heard it—a shot fired, maybe from across the lake. And another.
Pain bloomed deep inside. I clutched at my chest.
Maggie spun around, breaking our connection. “Graham!” She grabbed me, terror soaking her voice. “No! Graham!”
Before I knew it, I was on the ground staring up at the bare branches swaying overhead. Maggie’s beautiful face faded in and out.
“Please don’t leave me again. I can’t….”
Then came Bec and Wren.
Then blackness.
Maggie
It was funny how time seemed to stop when someone you loved so much was barely holding on to the fragile thread we called life. It was like no matter what you did… who you talked to… who you called in for help… the world just stopped… until it didn’t, and when that happened, you finally knew if they made it.
That was how it was for me that night. After Graham was shot, my entire world stopped. Everything remained in slow motion. I couldn’t even tell if my own heart was beating anymore. I didn’t think I breathed or even blinked the entire time.
The bright lights of the triage mixed with the hot tears searing trails down my cheeks was the only thing keeping me from passing out. It was probably loud in there, but I didn’t hear a thing. Only the silence of my heart waiting for Graham to take a breath on his own. To open his eyes. To smile at me. Hold me.
There was so much blood. Almost as much as what was in that basement with Portia, at least it seemed that way. Surprisingly, I didn’t go into shock. At least I didn’t think I did—not like before anyway. Graham’s blood covered me, but this was blood I couldn’t wipe off. I didn’t want to, because what if it was the last part of him I’d be able to physically touch?
Bishop rushed past me as the room filled with nurses, EMTs, and doctors, bumping me, pushing me to the side, telling me to move—but all I could do was stand there staring at the one man who held my whole heart in his hands. The only person to make me feel like I was worth saving, and now he was lying on that table, bleeding out.
A sharp tone from the heart monitor screeched through the room. My eyes darted to the screen as I watched the last beat of his heart quickly become replaced by a solid flat line.
“No! No, no nononono!” I shoved my arm past the nurses, reaching for Graham. “You can’t leave me! Graham! No! You promised me you wouldn’t leave me again!” I sobbed as two hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me.
