“Come for me again, kleine Hexe. Let go and give me everything.”
Her arms shoot behind herself, bracing both hands on my knees. She stops moving up and down, tilting her hips to drag her clit against me, her throat opening in an uncharacteristic wail of surrender as her tight pussy tremors almost violently with her bliss.
I don’t want to diminish her moment, but the intensity of her response spurs my own, and I feel molten energy gather, ready to overtake me.
“You should move—oh God, it’s now or never, Talia.” My jaw clenches and my hands drop to her waist, encouraging her to lift up and off.
Instead she throws her arms around my neck and grinds down hard in my lap. “All of it, please,” she pants against my neck. “I want to keep you. Fill me up…”
My teeth grit hard as I’m dashed by the wave, crying out in shock as much as ecstasy.
This is right, this is right… it’s perfect. Exactly where I need to be, tumbles through my barely coherent brain. The flood of heatseems endless, my cock an earthquake of tribute to my desire for this woman.
“Yes,” she murmurs against my neck, fingers combing into the damp hair at the nape of my neck. “All for me. You’re mine… I’m keeping you.”
When she pulls back, we study each other with mingled seriousness and joy. I draw a stray lock of hair away from her lips, then kiss her.
“I hope we won’t regret that,” I confess.
“Sorry I didn’t exactly consult you about the changeup,” she says with a wince. “At first I just didn’t want to get the rental car messy. But…” She hides against the crook of my shoulder again. “I think also I justneededthat.”
“Technically, the ‘please’ made it a question,” I say with an indulgent smile. “I could have said no, but I wanted it too. Welcomed the moment.” I smooth a hand down her back in desultory strokes.
She squeezes my cock, almost like a reassuring hug, and I’m so happy to still be inside her. I never want to leave.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she assures me. “I’m regular as clockwork, and two days from my next period. We’re good.”
I hold back my lovesick reply, only thinking it:Wearegood. Together.
But trailing in on the tail of the thought, I worry how long I have until this sandcastle is dashed away.
17
MONTRÉAL
ONE MONTH LATER
NATALIA
It’s the third call today from an unknown number in Corbin, Kentucky, and again I tap Ignore.
Phaedra steps over the back of the bench near the water where we’re sitting at Parc Jean-Drapeau and plonks down with a grunt, glancing at my phone as she shoves a small paper sack—splotched with translucent butter stains—toward me.
“They were out of the pain au chocolat, so I got you a Kouign-amann,” Phae tells me. She digs into her own bag and tears a piece of the pastry inside, folding its golden flakiness into her mouth. “This is mysecondone,” she confesses, mouth full. “I won’t need to eat for a week—like a python that’s swallowed a capybara. But holy shit these are incredible.”
I peer into my pastry bag, then peel off a bite of Kouign-amann, admiring the decadent lamination before popping it into my mouth.
Phae points at my phone when it dings with a voicemail. “Her again?”
I shrug, chewing.
“Just letting her dangle, huh?”
My eyes narrow and I swallow too quickly. “Let’s see… it’s been six months since Sherri and Jason elbowed their way back into my life, so I figure in another, hmm”—I pretend to calculate, tapping at my temple—“twenty-seven and a half years, I can reassure them I’m alive and got the message. Sound fair?”
Phae rolls her eyes, twisting another chunk of pastry free. She surprisingly doesn’t have a snarky comeback and instead nibbles at a sugar-encrusted edge of dough, gazing across the water to the adjoining island where the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is located. Her dark auburn hair blows across her cheek and she swipes it aside, leaving a pastry flake on her eyebrow, which I brush away.
I go back to dismantling my own breakfast, but it’s hard to enjoy it, distracted by everything Phaeisn’tsaying. “Okay, just… out with it,” I mutter. “I know you’re brimming with opinions, so let’s get it over with.”
