Prologue
Night after the engagement…
Easton Wade
Aura’s hand found mine beside her head and held on.
Her fingers slid between mine and tightened as I thrust into her, slow enough to make her feel every inch of my cock.
The room was dark except for the low amber spill of my bedside lamp, and for once, she didn’t turn her face away. She didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t hide behind that sharp little mouth or the smirk she used like body armor. She looked at me, really looked at me like I wasn’t just her dirty little secret or the guy she texted after midnight when the rest of the world had gone quiet and her self-control got bored.
“Easton,” she breathed, and my whole body nearly came apart from the sound of my name in her mouth like that. Not sarcastic or weaponized or thrown at me to prove she could keep this casual if she angled the word right.
She spoke my name softly, broken and wrapped around what felt like a promise.
Her nails bit into my hand, and her other arm curled around my shoulders, pulling me closer as her thighs locked around my hips. I watched her fight it. Watched the exact second her orgasm stripped the last of the armor from her face. Her lips parted, and her brows drew together. Her eyes went shiny and furious and terrified, like needing me had snuck up on her and she hated that I could see it, hated she let me see it.
That was the part that ruined me. She let me see everything she felt in that one instant.
For once, Aura didn’t look away before I could see the truth. She stayed with me, eyes locked on mine while I rocked into her, while her breath broke, while the first helpless sound slipped out of her throat and punched straight through my chest.
I knew then.
I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t making it up because I wanted her too badly. I wasn’t confusing great sex with meaning or building a relationship out of midnight texts and my own fucking wishful thinking.
She was there with me. All the way there.
Her body arched beneath mine, warm and shaking, her braids spread across my pillow, our hands locked beside her head like some stupid, devastating promise neither of us had been brave enough to say out loud. Her face crumpled around my name again, and when she came apart, she did it looking right at me.
“Easton.”
That was what finished me. The truth of her, the version I kept getting in flashes and losing the second morning got too close.
I buried my face against her throat and came with a groan, every muscle in my body locking as pleasure ripped through me hard enough to fill her full of my come. My breath punched out against her skin, my fingers still threaded through hers, and for one blinding second, there was nothing in the world except Aura Clarke holding on to me like letting go might kill her.
For maybe twenty seconds, she stayed soft and open beneath me, breathing hard with her pulse beating wild under my mouth and her hand still locked in mine.
I stayed there too long.
I knew I did, but hope made me stupid. My weight was braced on one forearm, careful not to crush her, but I stayed tucked close, breathing against the damp curve of her neck while the room smelled like sex, her coconut lotion, and the expensive candle she mocked me for owning but lit every time she came over anyway.
Outside my window, Hockey House groaned around us with old pipes, distant bass from downstairs, and somebody yelling Briggs’s name like that would ever solve anything.
Aura’s thumb moved once against mine, soft enough to feel accidental and sweet enough to hurt.
Then she seemed to remember herself and her fingers stopped. Her body shifted beneath mine, and just like that, the door slammed shut. Not the actual door, never the actual door but the door that is Aura Clarke.
I felt it happen before she said a word. She turned her face away from mine, staring at the ceiling as her breathing evened out too fast. Her hand slipped out of mine and fell to the sheet between us. Her thighs loosened around me, not all at once, but enough to remind me this was the part where she usually started putting herself back together and I pretended not to notice how badly it cut.
“Move, Wade,” she said, her voice still a little breathless. “You’re heavy.”
I lifted my head and looked at her, but she didn’t look back.
The lamp on my nightstand threw warm light over her face, catching the shine on her bottom lip, the flush still high on her cheeks, and the tiny line between her brows that meant she was already working out how fast she could leave without making it look like leaving.
Something inside my chest went cold. Not angry, really, just exhausted.
Holy shit, I was tired in ways sleep didn’t touch.
