Not sobs.
Beeps.
A monitor screaming.
Her weight flickers. Her body dissolves like smoke between my hands. And I’m left empty. Cold. Gasping into nothing.
“Dax.”
Her voice. But not the way she said it in my hallucination. Not wild. Not wrecked. This is sharper. Fierce. A blade through the static.
“Dax, stay with me.”
My throat locks. My body jerks against restraints I don’t remember being strapped into. Sweat stings my eyes, and when I blink, it’s not the chapel, not the battlefield, not her riding me—it’s light. Too bright. White canvas. Flood lamps.
And her.
Cassandra.
Her real face. Hair tied back, eyes swollen from crying, but steady. Her hands are on me—not fucking me, not hitting me, not clawing—but pressing hard against my chest, grounding me.
“You hear me?” she snaps, voice breaking. “You don’t get to quit, Kingston. You don’t get to leave me here.”
My cock aches, still leaking from a release that might not even be real, but the burn in my ribs is sharper, hotter, dragging me back.
I rasp her name—nothing but gravel.
She leans in close, so close I feel her tears hit my skin. “I’m right here. It’s me. Your Butterfly. Stay with me.”
Her lips brush my ear, not a kiss, just heat and desperation. And fuck if my body doesn’t shudder like she just rode me raw again.
Because maybe that’s what this is.
Not sex.
Not hallucination.
Something worse.
The rawest possession of all—her voice, her touch, her will—dragging me back from the dead.Her cunt squeezes me, milking me, her thighs locked around my waist, nails raking down my back?—
“Dax!”
The voice cuts, jagged, real.
I slam my eyes open.
Not the chapel. Not her body. Light. White canvas. Flood lamps. My chest a furnace, my ribs tearing, hands pinned by leather straps.
But she’s there.
Cassandra.
Her face hovering above me, eyes wild, cheeks wet, lips trembling. Her hands pressed flat to my chest, her voice breaking against my skin.
“You’re not leaving me,” she sobs. “You’re not fucking leaving me.”
My hips buck anyway. My body doesn’t know what’s real. I’m inside her, I swear I’m inside her, she’s sobbing my name and her heat is everywhere?—
