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She lied. She lied. If she thought this was about comfort she wouldn’t be shaking from the effort of not touching him.
He lifted his head and pinned her with a look that stripped all her excuses and defenses away, his face carved by shadows and his eyes so dark they were lie assassins. “I might not survive the comfort of you.”
It boiled over inside of her, bats wings and desire, thrill and risk and want. A smarter person would back away from this edge. She put her hands on his wonderful face and dove into the chasm of him.
Chapter Seventeen
God. Fuck. Zeke’s world exploded, shattered into a zillion pieces, and took the core of him with it. He was stardust, space trash. He was kissing Aurora Rae Archer. Softly, slowly, as carefully as he knew how, for the unadulterated erotic privilege of it.
Her hands started on his face as if she was scared he’d disappear. He should’ve gotten the fuck out of this cabin, but greedy bastard that he was, he’d reached for her and now he held her, his sun—the singular point he’d lazily orbited his whole life—tight enough to make her gasp; to make him tremble.
This was a cataclysm, and he’d be sucked into a black hole of oblivion if he let this go on, but magnetic forces he couldn’t name and would never understand made her wrap her arms and legs around him and bite his lip.
That bite, sharp, stinging; the way she pulled on his bottom lip and pressed on his cock; the grind she set up. It made his head spin. There’s no up or down in space, no way to tell which way you’re headed and nothing to hold you down. He anchored all of himself in the kiss, in the angle of their faces and the silk of her skin, the full, plump draw of her lips and the taste of her mouth. He couldn’t contain all of her, capture enough of her light and warmth, her life-giving force. The risk of her was more than any big wave surfed, mountain climbed, parachute jump. Rory was his endgame and he didn’t know how to pull up, drift through and avoid the insanity.
He was halfway across the room, trying to stop his brain leaking out of his eyes and she was sprawled on her ass before he knew what he’d done.
“We can’t do that.”
“Zeke.” His one-syllable name rattled on her breath, drawn out with longing that made him bend forward and cover his head with his arms. He could not make sense of this. It was an illusion. Some kind of lust bends brought on by deep immersion in this off-kilter world. It was a way of grasping the familiar when everything was shifting and uncertain.
“We can’t. We fucking can’t.”
“You want this as much as I do.”
He straightened up and paced the room. Keep moving, keep away from her, don’t look at her. If you look at her, you asshole, you are lost forever. “We can get ourselves killed this way.”
She knew that was the truth. He heard her stand. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice so small and fragile he couldn’t not turn to her. He’d knocked her down. He’d made her sorry. Fuck, she was beautiful, standing there her hair loose from its band. He’d done that, pulled it out so he could have its inky length in his fingers. Her face was swathed in moonlight and her eyes glittered, seeing what in him after this? Misguided friend, enemy, betrayer.
Ticking fucking time bomb.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.
Upset him? She thought he was angry with her.
She reached for the door. “I thought...I thought you wanted that as much as I did.”
He was there to stop her leaving, to prove her wrong. To lift her, spin her, put her back against the cabin wall and kiss her hard enough to brand the truth into her.
He’d wanted her since he understood what desire was. Everything he was as an adult, as a lover, came from loving Rory and not being able to show it, for pride, for fear, for knowledge that he had never been her choice. All of that on top of the belief that Cal was the better man for her.
But he was her choice now and that meant everything.
“Aurora.” Her name thundered through him and spilled out in a frenzy of touch that overloaded his senses. Her face, her neck, her throat, the inside of her wrist, the crook of her elbow. The sweep of her rib cage, the weight of her breast. His hands and his lips rejoiced in her but under his skin his body shook like his bones might disconnect. His eyes watered, and his heartbeat tried to choke him. He held Rory in his arms and it wasn’t fantasy.
“Slow down, slow down. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
She whispered against his lips and through his lust-drugged haze he heard her in the deepest recesses of his brain where this was impossible, only a dream on its way to a nightmare.
He dropped his face into the crook of her neck, and as she raked her fingers through his hair, his heartbeat slowed, his breathing settled, his greed grew from the small, tamped down, manageable force he lived with every day to an immense beast he had no desire to contain.
“Tell me you want this,” he said, lifting his head to see the miracle.
She put her finger to his cheekbone, traced it down his face over his scruff to his lips where he tasted salt. “I want this so bad, I’m burning up.”
“It’s dangerous.”
She kissed the tear track on his face, muttered, “Unprofessional,” and slanted her lips possessively over his.
