Page 190

Her eyes stay open.

She watches me like she is scared and certain at the same time, like she has already fallen and is waiting for the ground to appear beneath her. I put one hand under her head and the other at her waist, holding her closer.

“You’re safe,” I say before I can stop myself.

Her eyes shine. “I know,” she whispers.

I almost lose my rhythm.

She knows. After Evan, after fear, after every reason not to trust a man like me, she says it like a fact.

I kiss her harder, and she clings to me, her body tightening around my cock as I thrust deeper. The pace changes then. Not rough, not careless, but stronger. Her moans come faster. Mine do too. I bury my face in her neck because the sound of her is becoming too much.

She comes again with her legs locked around me, her body shaking under mine, her pussy clenching so hard I have to stop moving for a second.

I breathe through it. Barely.

Then she turns her face and kisses my jaw. “Don’t stop.”

I don’t. I fuck her through the aftershocks, slow at first, then harder when her hips lift again. She is sensitive now, gasping at every stroke, but she keeps pulling me back down when I try to ease up.

“Like this,” she whispers. “Please.”

So, I keep her there, pinned under me, filled by me, kissed through every broken sound she makes. Her breasts press against my chest. Her hands move restlessly over my back. She is warm and alive and choosing me with every breath.

The pressure builds low and hard.

I try to hold it off, but then she says my name again, soft and open, and her body tightens around me a third time.

That’s enough.

I come deep inside her, my face against her throat, my hand gripping the sheet beside her head. The release hits hard enough that for a few seconds I cannot think, cannot speak, cannot do anything except hold myself over her and breathe.

She keeps her arms around me.

I lower my weight carefully, not crushing her, and she turns her face into my neck. Her breathing is uneven. So is mine.

For a long time, neither of us says anything.

Then she whispers, “That felt different.”

“Yes.”

“You felt it too?”

I lift my head and look at her. “Yes,” I say.

I kiss her cheek. It’s a small thing, almost nothing compared to everything else I want from her, but she goes still beneath my mouth as if I have touched something more private than skin.

I feel it too. That’s the problem.

It would be easier if this were only hunger. I understand hunger. I can control it, use it, satisfy it, ignore it when necessary. But Elara looks up at me from my bed with her robe open and her eyes uncertain, and all I can think is that I want her here tomorrow too and more.

“Elara,” I say.

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”