Page 45 of Dancing in the Dark

Without warning, without testing to see how we fit, he surges forward and fills me to the brim. His breath comes out on a primal grunt, and mine comes out on a scream. He curls his hand under my face, lifts, and turns me, then he slams his lips to mine and rides me with a brutality I always knew he’d deliver.

He feels too much. It simply wouldn’t be possible for him to do this any other way.

“Fuck.” His hips piston back and forth, the fronts of his thighs clapping against the backs of mine. His hip bones dig into my ass, and still, his tongue darts forward and tangles with mine. “Fuck, Sera. I swear I’m gonna be better for you.” He fucks me savagely. Fiercely. He fucks me until I’m sure he intends to ride us to the grave. Then he straightens his back, pulls out until my loss becomes a physical devastation, then he drops to his knees, peels my ass cheeks apart, and feasts.

I explode with a violence I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from.

With a brutality I’m not sure I’ll ever forget.

But that’s okay, because no good, intelligent woman lucky enough to see this side of Charlie Fletcher would ever, in a sane state, wish to forget the magic his touch wields.

17

FLETCH

My phone buzzes somewhere else in Sera’s apartment. One incoming text. And then another. Another. It’s an incessant vibrating demand that I pay attention to someone other than the two of us, but an hour after I carried Sera into her room and got to see firsthand, for the first time ever, how she decorates her most private space, I can’t summon even a modicum of urgency to climb out from beneath her warm body and answer whoever wants me.

The only person who could pry me away from this is my daughter, but she’s safe with Cato, and he knows to call if something is wrong.

I trail the tips of my fingers over her bare back, drawing patterns against her delicate skin and luxuriating in who we are in this very moment.

I know better than most that good things rarely last.

“Did I hurt you?” I draw a deep breath, lifting her delicious body with the expansion of my lungs. Bringing her down again, I press a gentle kiss to the top of her hair. “Sera?”

She hums under her breath, a satisfied purr rumbling from somewhere deep in her chest. “Didn’t hurt me.”

“Are you sleepy?”

She exhales a soft snicker and tilts her head back. Long, black lashes come up to tap her perfect skin. She’s so soft, so delicate, so fucking flawless in every state. “I’m relaxed,” she mumbles. “Enjoying the bliss only the best orgasms can bring me.”

Grinning, I pucker my lips and wait.

Don’t reject me. Don’t reject me. Please, baby. Don’t fucking reject me.

She digs her elbows into my ribs, lifts, and brushes her lips over mine.

Thank fuck.

“You’ll have to leave soon, huh?” She suckles on her bottom lip and lies down again. “It’s getting late.”

“Mm.” I glimpse the clock on her bedside table and groan at the 11:30 cruelly flashing on the screen. “Yeah.” Sighing, I slide my hands along her back and down to her thighs, and since I’m not quite satisfied with how close we are, I drag her impossibly closer. If I could tuck her inside my body, I would. “I wish I didn’t have to.”

“I wish you didn’t have to either.” She settles in again, resting her ear over my heart and trailing her fingertips along the inky design spanning my ribs. “I wish we could hit pause on the world and stay here a little longer.”

“Are you terrified that once I go home, this all stops and we’ll go back to who we were before…” I swallow the ache bubbling at the base of my throat. “Or is that just me?”

Instead of saying so out loud, she merely sniffles and shifts her head until I feel her nod.

“I want to make this work,” I rasp. So fucking selfish. So greedy. Because I’m still the same broke screw-up who can never seem to get things quite right for her. And she… fuck, she deserves so much better. “I want to see you tomorrow and know we still have this.” I place my finger under her trembling jaw and draw her back until I’m caught in her teary gaze. In the heartbreak she’s forced to feel, time and time again.

Because of me.

“I can’t live my life without wanting you,” I groan. “I can’t exist in this same place, same lifetime, same fucking universe, without wanting to keep you for myself.”

“Charlie—”

“I love you.” I exhale a shuddering breath and loathe the rogue tear that spills gently onto her cheek. “You don’t have to say it back, and I’m not making you responsible for my feelings. I ran face-first into this, knowing every conversation we ever had was me making a dick of myself and you trying to brush my stupidity off before it clung to you like a bad smell. I just…” I shake my head. “I can’t not say it anymore. This is it for me.” Carefully, I inch to the left. And then I move another inch more. I twist until, slowly, her succulent body tilts to the side, then I lay her on the bed and turn until we’re nose to nose, my hand on her hip and our legs tangled until I’m not entirely sure where I end and she begins. “I’m gonna keep on loving you,” I rasp. “And you’re gonna… Keep on doing whatever you want to do. I’m gonna ask you out every single day from now until we’re dead, and hopefully, someday, if I’m really lucky, we’ll reach a point where me walking out the door won’t feel so scary anymore.”