Page 312 of Every Almost

"Look at me, please," Charlie repeated.

Reyna raised her eyes to Charlie's.

Charlie smiled. "I'm not scared."

Reyna's expression shifted to adoration. "You're not?"

"No," she replied. "How could I be? I'm with you. All this is happeningwith you."

Reyna let out a sound close to a laugh.

"I feel so safe," Charlie finished. She lowered to Reyna and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "But, if it makes you feel better, we can have a conversation with Kess about it."

This time, Reyna did laugh, prompting Charlie to smile wide.

"Okay," Reyna agreed as she looked up at Charlie, the laugh melting away.

"Later," Charlie said. Then she brought her hand up to Reyna's breast again, hearing the sound Reyna made echo through her whole mind. "Much, much later."

"Yes," Reyna whispered as she arched her back into Charlie's touch.

Charlie dropped her lips to Reyna's skin, kissing across her jaw. Reyna moved a hand into Charlie's hair as Charlie trailed down to Reyna's neck, nipping the skin there, hearing Reyna's breath hitch as she moved.

"Charlie," Reyna breathed.

"I know."

Everywhere their skin touched felt suddenly sacred, because it was. The rose changed everything. It took what should’ve belonged to one body and carried it into the other. Every breath, every tremor, every place one of them came apart arrived in both of them at once. The intimacy was almost too much to survive.

They weren’t only touching anymore. They were meeting somewhere neither of them had known existed.

Charlie kissed lower, down the line of Reyna's throat, across the delicate ridge of her collarbone, following the light that gathered ahead of her mouth as though the rose knew where she was going before she did. Reyna's fingers tightened in her hair, and Charlie felt the tug and, beneath it, threaded through the bond, Reyna's sensation folding back into her.

She reached the soft swell of Reyna's breast, but didn't rush.

Charlie pressed her lips to the skin just above the nipple, kissing a circle around the hardened peak without touching it directly.

"Charlie," Reyna pleaded.

Charlie gave in almost instantly and closed her mouth around Reyna's nipple.

Reyna arched off the bed with a sound Charlie felt in her own chest.

"Jesus—" The word broke apart in Reyna's mouth. "Charlie."

Charlie moaned around her. She couldn't help it. But it wasn't only the taste of Reyna's skin, or the way the nipple pebbled against her tongue, it was that sensation racing back through the rose, the phantom of pleasure doubling to be a part of her, making her dizzy.

She flicked her tongue and heard Reyna's breath catch. Charlie felt it too. The two of them were caught in the same current.

She drew back just enough to whisper against the wet skin of Reyna's nipple. "I can feel what I'm doing to you."

"I know," Reyna breathed. Her whole body was trembling. "God, I know, I feel—both?—"

"Both," Charlie agreed, and took her into her mouth again.

She let the nipple go with a pop before moving kissing across the valley between Reyna's breasts to give the other the same devotion. She closed her lips around the second nipple and rolled it gently with her tongue.

Reyna's hips lifted, and the rose spilled bright beneath Charlie's mouth, racing up her own throat in answer. Charlie groaned against Reyna, undone by the strangeness and the beauty of this phenomenon, by how it felt to be inside Reyna's pleasure as a willing participant.