Her eyes are hooded, and she’s shivering with need, but shereaches up and strokes my face, like she did that day in the hall, a curious scrunch to her sweet little nose. “So, you’re saying we have nothing left to lose now?”
I smile, coiling myself tighter around her and moving my face within an inch of hers. “No. At least, that’s not what this is for me. You’re my everything, Little Moon. Now that you’re mine, I haveeverythingto lose.”
Those hazels teem with so many unspoken things before she tugs me even closer. And the way her chest shudders against mine has me convinced she’s saying goodbye, if only emotionally.
But then she rasps out the last sentiment I would expect. “You’re a good man, Ty. The best.”
My tempo accelerates. An urgency to save this moment from a fiery demise burns through me, even as I’m compelled to impart the ugly truth. “I’m not, Rena. I’m the worst kind of man. I’m your cage.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” She detangles her arms and peels off my shirt. “You’re not a monster.” Tosses it to the floor. “You didn’t fail.” Her eyes lock with mine. “And I’m not a prisoner.”
A shuddering breath billows out of my lungs, so I meld us—skin to skin—and grit out my demand. “Don’t do that—romanticize this. I’ll spend my life trying to be … I’ll end up haunting you.”
“You’re more than your past,” she rasps, her streaming tears wetting my shoulder as her heels dig into my jean-clad ass.
She’s in agony while I’m inside her. Because no matter how I skew it, loving her is the epitome of plundering a treasure to destroy it.
There’s a part of me that needs her to understand that, needs her to hate me for what I’m stealing from her. But the other part is so fucking desperate to be a man worthy of holding her.
I tweak her nipple, delivering a more exhilarating type of pain, and sink my teeth into her collarbone for the same purpose—biting and branding. Peppering her neck and shoulders and breasts with frantic kisses and nips.
Rough and soothing.
Affliction and atonement.
Claiming and clemency.
She moans, succumbing to the euphoria of her impending release, but her sticky, anguish-soaked cheeks heckle me.
“It’s happening right now.” I thrust harder, contrition seizing the breath in my lungs and shame blanketing me, knowing she’s the slice of heaven I don’t deserve. “I told you I’d drown you in darkness.”
Deeper.
Harder.
More.
She pants from the intrusion as I slam into her inner walls, no doubt rendering her even sorer than she already was. That stinging jolt has her teetering on the edge though, her cunt strangling my cock so vehemently that stars mar my vision and a heated zing rockets from my balls to my abdomen to my spine and limbs.
“That’s it, baby girl,” I encourage, pounding into her as the music croons a new tune and the washer judders and the air wafts butterscotch and blueberry fields.
“Such a good girl.” I circle her clit to shove her over the precipice, soaking in her seeking hazels, which showcase how utterly ravenous she is for her climax. “So beautiful when you come,” I praise. “Give it to me. I want it all. Every fucking part of you.”
Because I’m selfish. But at least I can give her this.
A sheen of sweat seeps out of her pores, glimmering in a potent announcement of her soaring into ecstasy. But, as if she were suspended mid-flight, she clutches my cheeks. “Ty?”
It’s a question of some sort, and even though I don’t know if I can deliver, I can’t bear for her to want to leave me, so I simply say, “Anything,” on a ragged exhale. “You can have anything.”
She slants her head, tear-soaked lashes fluttering through her valiant pause. “All I want is you. All of you.” A satiny purr falls from her lips, but she forges ahead, her voice raw yet resolute. “If you’re a cage, then lock me up. If you’re a haunting, I’ll be a ghost. And if you’re the darkness, I’ll be your Little Moon.”
And she fucking broke me. Cracked me wide open. Stealing the chilling wind from my lungs and replenishing it with sacrificial words.
How could she still want me? See it all and still want me?
Thirteen years of guilt and shame. Of misery and torment. Of never-ending fucking hellfire. It all showers onto her as I hoist her to my waist, spin us around, flatten her to the wall, and thrust with everything I have, trembling as we both plummet off the edge, releasing in unison.
“Are you even fucking real? Jesus, tell me this is real and that you’re mine, Rena.”
