Page 65 of Redline Communion

That.

I can stay there.

He moves between my breasts, leaving bite marks behind before trailing softer kisses lower.

When he finally pushes inside me, the first thrust knocks the breath out of both of us. I gasp against his shoulder while his moan lands warm against my skin, and everything blurs together: the rush still buzzing beneath my skin, his body over mine, the weight of him pinning me to one place when my mind wants to be everywhere at once.

This is what I meant when I picked the name.

This is Lark.

His little birdy, if I want to be.

Rafe fucks me slow and steady, finding a rhythm that makes it impossible to think more than one thought at a time. I clutch his back and pull more of his weight onto me because the pressure feels good.

Safe, almost.

I refuse to examine that word.

He kisses my cheek, then the other, before tucking his face against my neck, his fingers brushing my hair away from my ear.

“Let go and be free,” he whispers. “Let go, Little Birdy.”

Something inside me cracks without the courtesy of making a scene about it. The tears are simply there before I understand I’m crying, hot tracks down my face and onto his arm while I clutch him harder.

He doesn’t stop.

I don’t ask him to.

If he stops, I might have to figure out why I’m crying, and that is absolutely not what Lark came into this room to do.

He keeps the same rhythm while I hold on. The pressure builds until I can’t separate the pleasure from the relief of finally having something louder than my own head, and my orgasm catches hard, pulling a broken sound out of me as I tighten around him.

Rafe keeps moving.

He lifts his head to look at me, wipes the tears from my face, and kisses me softly.

Of course he has to be gentle now, when gentle is the one thing most likely to get through.

I’m still floating when I kiss him back harder.

I need him to understand without making me explain it: I want him here, I want this, and for these few minutes he has made everything else quiet enough that I can pretend freedom is as simple as choosing what happens to my own body.

My tongue meets his before I bite his lower lip.

Rafe groans loudly into my mouth, and his rhythm breaks for the first time.

Then he comes inside me.

We stay tangled together afterward, both of us breathing too hard. I’m high on coke, Rafe is apparently high on making terrible decisions with me, and for a few stupid minutes I feel every bit as free as I promised everyone Lark would be.

It won’t last.

I already know that.

Right now, I don’t care.

Near dawn, Zaconia finds me on the villa’s back patio.