His scent, his breathing, the thumping of his heart, it all overwhelmed me. The tender way he held me blossomed in my heart like a new magic was taking form that only he could create.
He lifted me by my bottom as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I tucked my head into his neck, kissing and sucking along the hair-thin scar that ran from his jaw down his neck I had given him as a child. The taste of salt and spices coated my tongue as he took each step up the stairs then gently laid me down on the bed.
He leaned over me and let his lips brush over mine. It was familiar and sweet, and it had me caving. Before, our kisses were loving and tender. Now therewas this gravitational animosity between us that cracked open a new type of passionate intimacy.
“Ripley…” he whispered. “You will never know how much I have missed you.” His hand ran down my neck, over my shoulder, and down my arm to my hand. “Are you going to regret this?”
“I’m not sure.” Regret. I could feel it boiling up with his question. I shouldn’t. I might.
He glided his hand over my heart. “I’d rather die than let the Cidris have you again. The only reason I didn’t rip them all apart for laying a hand on you was because we were outnumbered. And I’ve seen what they do to traitors.”
Beneath the touch of his palm, I felt it. I felt that connection I’d been deprived of weave from him into my whole body. He still loved me.
The thought curled in my stomach. It sent heat down my core and melted my insides with wetness. My body had never forgotten him.
No matter how much I felt the three powerful words clawing their way up my chest, I couldn’t pry my teeth open. My throat remained closed.
Anticipation crossed his expression like he knew what I was feeling, what I wanted to say.
I swallowed hard and looked inwardly for the love I had held for him but came up with something a lot more complicated and intricate that glittered of old love woven into its delicate fabric of our relationship. It held grief and beauty. And I grasped it. Because it was mine. It was ours. Still, in the lowest, saddest whisper, I admitted, “I can’t say it yet, Fletcher.”
Something emerged in his eyes that gathered in dusty and morose storm clouds. It was lust and a shot of clarity that battled each other. He clenched his teeth. “I know.”
With my hands, I shoved myself upward toward the pillows, getting out from under him, and pulled back the covers for Fletcher to crawl in.
He made his way around the bed and lay beside me. I moved toward him, reaching for his black pants, pulling them down to see he was hard for me already. His arms scooped me up and dragged me over him.
I put a flat palm over his chest. “Are you going to be okay with all your wounds?”
“I will if you will.”
Though he held my physical wounds, I assumed he meant my marred psyche and indecision about him. Was I going to be okay making love to someone who had betrayed me?
I couldn’t agree or disagree. Instead, I brought my lips over his as I answered by easing myself down on him, filling myself so deeply that intense pleasure rippled through my body and sent a trapped moan out of my mouth. He took a sharp inhale as I ground myself against him. I felt the warm surface of the blankets get drawn over my bare back as he covered me. Then, one hand drove to the back of my head, bringing me harder into him. His kisses were deep and powerful, injecting some sort of life into my veins that I had lost while in the cages. His hands ran along my ribs, the same hands that had pressed down on the red button to farm me. Flashes of it played out like a montage. He had hurt me. He had hurt mesomuch. This was a cruel punishment.
“Please, think about this instead,” he begged, replacing the air between us with his lips.
Tears welled in my eyes as the softness of them melted me.
“It’s okay if this is too much. We can stop.”
I pulled away, letting cool air dampen the electricity between us, shaking my head. “It’s not.” My loose hair fell over his chest, creating a private curtain around our faces. “I want this.” I swallowed, lust for Fletcher overwhelming me in a haze as I turned myattention to him inside of me. The more I allowed myself to become submerged in him, the more I realized the sentence felt wrong. I needed to amend it. “I wantyou.”
“Come here,” he whispered, dragging me back down to him, lips meeting in a gentle frenzy.
He moved his hips and a caressing volt spiraled up my spine and down my legs. The memories of the cages blurred, shut behind a door I could abuse myself with another time.
Breath heavy. Heart rate increasing. The vision of Fletcher under me was strikingly picturesque. A moan freed itself from my throat as I continued to ride him, gyrating my hips in a rhythm that matched his thrusts. Circling myself on him, that bundle of hot nerves pressed against him once every rotation.
He groaned as his strong hands frantically explored my sides, my stomach, my breasts.
I closed my eyes in pleasure, and a magnificent garden of iridescent flowers bloomed all around and above us. I gasped, taking in the saturation of every colored petal. From the spilling wisteria off the luscious magnolia trees to the violet morning glory that climbed up their trunks. Mystical flowers grew before my eyes like a palace of reconciliation and ease.
A gentle breeze brushed my cheek while butterflies with bioluminescent circles drawn across their wings landed on the flowers around us.
My eyes shot open to a smirk on Fletcher’s flushed cheeks, his hands dimly glowing with my magic.
“Wherever you want to keep the bad thoughts away,” he whispered through ragged breath, his hand coming to cup my cheek.
