Page 51 of Where the Light No Longer Follows

Pressing his brow to hers, he sighed. “You’re perfect. How can you fit so perfectly in my hold yet be the only thing I can’t hold onto forever? How can you be made for me so perfectly yet be the one thing I cannot have?” he whispered as he kissed her neck, her shoulder, her arms, her hand, the tips of her finger, anywhere he could.

Reaching for the edges of her shirt, she pulled it up and over her head. The rest of her clothing followed until she stood before him bare and wanting, needing—desperately needing him. “You have me.”

“Say it again.” His touch was barely a whisper against her skin, like the gentle touch of spring wind, tentative and careful as he trailed the curves of her breasts until her limbs melted against his hold. “Tell me you’re mine like I am forever yours.”

When his hand came around her throat, wrapping there so gently as if she was a flower stem, her eyes drew shut. “I’m yours.”

He drew a nipple in his mouth, rolling his eyes up at her as he licked and sucked and bit her flesh, turning her entire body to liquid. Gabriel took his time with her, his lips and tongue exploring every dent and dip, tasting every inch of her skin until she was panting and on the cusp of begging.

Grasping her jaw with one hand, he kissed her while his other hand cupped and kneaded her breast, his fingers circling the hardened centre. He pulled back only so he could bring two fingers to his mouth to lick them. “I wanted to learn your body,” he said, lowering those fingers between her legs and pressing them to the apex of her sex, rubbing slow circles over her sensitive flesh until her legs were buckling and a moan flew out of her lips, only to be swallowed by him. “If only we had more time, I would have taken my time with every dip and curve. Tasted every inch of your skin until it would be branded in my memory until the very end.”

“Please,” she begged between kisses, as pressure built up down her spine and at her core.

“Don’t beg me, my ruin. Order me. Tell me what you need.”

“You.”

He smiled over her lips as her fingers slid down her sex, teasing her wet entrance. “I need you to be a little more precise. A finger?” he asked, pushing one inside her and leaving her gasping. “Or two?” He nipped at her lips as a second one filled her, pushing them in and out of her until her limbs began trembling. “Or my cock? Fuck, you’re so wet. Maybe you want my cock. Tell me and I will give you anything you want.”

“Enough playing,” she breathed, her chest rising and falling fast. “Just have me.”

Sliding his fingers out of her, he brought them to his mouth, licking the both of them clean. “As you wish,” he said, lifting her up just enough to reach and remove his trousers. The man or God before her looked drunken, in an utter haze as he pressed his lips all over her before reaching between them with a hand and angling her hips with the other.

She gasped in his mouth when she felt the thick head of his cock nudge at her sex. But he did not push in just yet, he waited until she softened in his arms again, pushing her wetness over the length of her sex and teasing that centre of nerves at the apex of her thighs that had her gasping for new air, air that only he could breathe back in her lungs. He didn’t have to push in at all because Silene lowered herself on him, making them both groan. She sank down his cock bit by bit, moaning as he stretched her insides. “God.”

One of his hands came to the back of her neck, wrapping to hold her there as he kissed her. “I’m right here.”

“Arrogant prick.”

“That is inside you,” he cooed, his hips bucking up to remind her of just that, and he slid even deeper inside her.

Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she slowly rocked on his thick length, feeling her core heat up with each sway.

“My Silene,” he breathed in her mouth as his hands came down the curves of her body and settled on her hips as she slowly rode him. “My beautiful Silene.”

Her eyes drew shut as pressure built in her core. “I…I can’t.”

Hooking his hands under her knees, he lifted the both of them up and laid her down on the sofa on her back, hovering over her and taking the opportunity to suck on both her breasts before he grabbed his cock with one hand and pushed it in her again. “Open your legs wider for me, Silene,” he said, bracing both his hands on either side of her, and she felt her cheeks heat up. “That’s it, my beautiful ruin, let me see.”

She was sure she’d gone entirely red under his perusal.

Her legs wrapped around his thighs, and she watched where they joined, running her hands down his chest as he thrust in her gently, slowly. Then their eyes locked, the world disappearing as he made love to her, as he brought her near an edge nothing had ever brought her before. One that had her vision filled with stars and her lungs drowning with air. An edge he’d followed her to.

Spent and breathless, he pulled her on top of his naked body, his mouth pressing to the top of her head in a dozen kisses.

She’d never made love like that. Silene had never really made love at all. She hated the way bile rose to her throat at the memories of how her innocence had been ripped away. How she’d been merely an object to the other hands that had held her. “I wish this had been my first. I wish you’d been my first.”

“I am your first.”

“But—”

He trailed the back of his hand down her cheek. “Your brother killed them, and I burned every single soul who took what you did not give permission to take. They no longer exist. I burned their pasts and their futures, every trace of their existence. The only place they haunt is here,” he said, pressing a finger to her brow, “and soon they will be gone forever.”

“There are other things that haunt me there,” she admitted. “I like how he haunts me.”

“Then I shall haunt you, my great ruin.”

Tipping her head up, she pressed her mouth to his. “I will be waiting for it. Should we wash up?”