Page 35 of Sting of Sin

"You feel so good," I whispered.

She nodded, eyes bright. "Move. I want all of you."

I pulled back and thrust in again, slow and deep. Her legs wrapped around my waist. We moved together, bodies sliding, skin slapping softly. I kissed her neck, her shoulder, her mouth again and again. One of my hands found hers above the pillow. Our fingers laced. She squeezed tight.

Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes into her hair. I slowed, worried, but she shook her head and pulled him deeper with her heels on my back.

"Good tears," she whispered. "Keep going."

I did. I thrust harder, angling to hit that spot inside her with every stroke. Her free hand gripped my shoulder. Sweat slicked our skin. The room filled with the sound of me making love to her and our shared breaths. She came with a soft sob, clamping down around my cock. I followed right after, burying myself deep.

We stayed locked together afterward, my weight on her, her arms around me. I kissed the tears from her cheeks. She smiled against my mouth, small and shaky and real.

She took a breath that shook all the way through her. “I thought I’d never get to choose this.”

My forehead lowered to hers. “You’re choosing.”

“I know.”

Another tear slipped sideways. “I can feel it.”

There it was.

The grief and the healing in the very same breath.

Mourning the years they stole even as she took the first thing back that was only ever hers to give.

So I stayed.

I kissed the tears from her temples. I kept my hand in hers. I let the moment be tender without making it fragile, let the heat remain without letting it become a demand.

She drew me close again.

And sometime later she curled into me beneath the blankets with her cheek on my chest and her bare knee laid over mine.

Her hand rested open over my heart.

Deadweight.

Trusting.

Her breathing softened by degrees until sleep took her all at once.

I lay there holding the woman I had wanted my whole life.

Finally.

Impossibly.

For a few minutes, I let myself feel it clean. The warmth of her against me. The faint brush of her breath over my skin. The unbearable peace of knowing she had come here freely.

Then the stone in my chest turned.

Because she trusted me now.

All the way.

She had handed me everything she had, her body, her fear, her count of when the ghost was on the rise, the words she had kept locked away for four years.