“I killed Mark,” I say levelly. Testing the words as they leave my lips.
“You did,” Darius confirms, lathering his hands in soap before using them to begin cleaning my body, massaging my muscles, wiping away the horrible memories.
“Carrie was killed.”
Darius flinches. “I was afraid she had been. Veronica was expecting her to return, and she never did.”
“Veronica? Is she okay?”
Darius’s attention flicks above my left shoulder. “She is. She and William escaped before the FBI showed up.”
His words land uneasily in my stomach, but then he’s cleaning the apex of my thighs and it draws my attention.
Humming my appreciation, I lean further into his touch. I watch as his cock hardens to attention, as my body affects his just as much as his affects mine. It is a heady realization, but I push it down.
Later.
We will have endless time later.
But isn’t that the same thought that caused Darius and I’s first time to end up the way it did?
“Luna was caught in the loops too,” I say.
I expect shock, but instead his lips twitch. “That explains what she said.” He shrugs a shoulder, the water bouncing off his skin.
“I think we have finally escaped the loops. All of the threads are gone. I think…I think they were different strands of fate I was following.”
Darius smiles but doesn’t answer, as he continues cleaning me.
His cock presses into my belly, my attention shifts to it. To how girthy and difficult it was to get in, to how deliciously full I felt when he was inside of me, to how we deserve to rewrite our first encounter.
Tentatively my fingers reach out on their own, finding the tip.
Darius hisses between his teeth. “Sunday.”
Spurred on by his reaction I continue my exploration up his length, and then back to the tip, tracing the end with my fingertips.
Darius is no longer washing me. Instead, his hands find my hips, squeeze onto them. His fingers digging into the bones there.
The feeling is exquisitely grounding. A reminder that we are alive. That we are here,together.
“Darius.” Releasing him, I look up at him through my eyelashes, the water from the shower catches and I blink it away. “I want you. I want to show you how much, without a crowd, without the pressure, without the force. Just us.”
Darius leans forward, his lips pressing to my forehead. “You don’t need to prove anything.”
“Darius,” I expel. “I can't exist on your words. They fill me up with air, with wants and desires. But it's you who I need. I need you in a way that transcends the chaos that enshrouds us.”
Darius groans. “What happened, Sunday? How did this all change so fast? When I left you were a grieving teenager and now? Now you’re ready? Don’t you understand why I wouldn’t believe you?”
Averting my attention, I focus on the tub; it's clean, the porcelain unblemished, a stark difference to the one in my childhood home. The one where I first processed through my grief. "But it wasn't quick or sudden. I think the lifetimes, the loops, it all caught up to me. I still don't remember everything, I can feel parts of myself missing, but time has warped. It's stretched and extended. Auggie’s and Tripp’s deaths are both a recent and distant memory. But I know in my heart that I'm not doing wrong by either. That maybe this isn’t normal, but my love for you? For Axel? ForGrayson? It was inescapable. After all, doesn't it feel like in some ways that's the only reason I'm alive?”
Darius's lips brush against mine. "Maybe you're right. But still–"
"No! I'm not playing this game with you anymore, Darius. I know you are sweet and kind. But I also can feel your cock pressing into me. Know that you want me. So be honest. Tell the truth, I fucking need to hear it!” The shower is blinding me, heating my icy veins, but it is Darius who ignites it. Who frays and tangles my nerves.
"You want the truth, Sunday?" And then he's on me. The smooth tip of his cock pressing harder into my skin, his long fingers wrapping around the back of my neck. “The truth is that I enjoyed every fucking second of your cunt soaking me. Of stretching you. Of your little moans and whimpers as I forced my way into you. Ofbreeding you. Of my cum filling you up. The truth? I wanted to run off that stage and pluck out the eyes of every person who caught a glimpse of you. The truth?” He slams his lips into mine, painful, harsh. “I want more than anything to take you again. To have you here and now.”
His confession is both shocking…and relatable. Axel wears his crazy on his sleeve, but just as he said, they had to all be half mad to endure the time loops. Darius may not portray it outwardly, but it is in his energy, the way his eyes never leave my form, the humming of his body as it leans further into mine.
