I’m so in love with you, it hurts. I couldn’t breathe for all those years because you are my oxygen. There’s no living without you.
XO,
Always yours
“Fuck,” I wheeze, short on air myself, my voice quavering through my words. “It’s about time you told me that, sailor. I really needed to freaking hear it.”
He hooks his palms under my arms and lifts me onto his lap, gripping my jaw. “We moved so fast with everything else, and it had you questioning me. I didn’t want to risk you doubting this. Honestly, I don’t want to be saying it for the first time when we’re in the middle of this fucking trial either. None of this is what you deserve. But if something had happened tonight or … I’m all yours. Not because I needed to protect you or because we fell ass-backward into this goddamn mess. But because I’ve loved you for years. From afar. I just loved you enough to stay away.”
“Well, I’m sure glad you got the hell over that.” I smile, my eyes still leaking with unadulterated joy, not even caring about the dangeror the bad country song my life has become because Ty is worth it. “You probably already know, but I love you too.”
He answers with a devouring kiss, reminiscent of our first. The one I waited seven years for. Fleeing through the flooded blueberry fields to seize what others said we couldn’t.
And here we are, setting the whole damn plantation ablaze.
Breaking our ardent connection, he darts his tongue out for one more taste before he rasps, “Fucking heaven,” against my lips—in reference to the lingering taste of me in my mouth—as he cradles my face, his eyes fastened to mine. “I am your refuge. Do you understand me? There is nothing I won’t do to take care of you, to protect you—body, mind, and soul. I did love you enough to stay away, but now, I love you enough to hold you close. To never let you go. To let you leap. To doanythingnecessary to keep you whole.”
Within that declaration is a petition for me to share with him what I saw on that roof, but those are the very reasons I can’t, so I move us to greener pastures by ripping his shirt open, buttons popping everywhere as he huffs a quiet chuckle.
“Right now, Ty, I need you to fill my empty hole like you promised. Fuck me into oblivion. Start with that.”
“Always such a slut for my cock, baby girl.” He smiles that devilish grin again, and my insides romp with exultation. “If you need me to split you in two, crack open your cunt, and get my answers from you that way, you don’t have to ask me twice.”
His filthy mouth throws me so off-balance. I think I might have blacked out there.
I’m not sure how we manage it, but his clothes are off in a blink, his hard cock saluting me as he grips my hips, lines himself up, and slides me over the entirety of his shaft—not a bit gentle. I gasp, sucking in a sharp intake of air as he stretches me, crowding my pussy to the point of pain-laced pleasure.
An impeccable representation of everything we are.
Beauty in the broken.
Blooms in the desert.
Gardens upon graves.
Which is why, as I bounce in a cadence that has us both moaning in delirium and he squeezes my bobbing breasts, tweaks my taut nipples, and peppers kisses along the column of my throat, I find myself tracing my fingertips along the rough edges of his torment—the little reminders that his raised skin bestows. No matter how many identities he’s claimed or how many times he remakes himself, those remain. My map to his affliction, a web of his perseverance.
Strength and sacrifices showcased through scars.
As his fingers entwine with my wet strands, his jaded ghosts seem suddenly ablaze with new purpose. “You are the only face I’ve ever seen. The only place I’ve ever fit. My bright light. Nothing will ever come between us, Little Moon. Not our past. Not these goddamn trials. Not even death could separate us. My soul will always find yours. I’ll love you in this life and the next and all the ones to come.”
My eyes are hooded, and my voice is breathy, woven with the emotion of our everlasting connection and the foggy lust of soaring toward the precipice. “An eternity of our dancing demons. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Ty. My freedom fairy tale.”
And seconds before I’m about to come, he flings me onto the bed, bends me in half, and fucks me into another state of consciousness until we’re a sweaty, shaky mess of tangled limbs and crashing heartbeats, tattered souls made whole by clinging to one another.
My tortured husband doesn’t stop there though. He makes good on all his plans—cooking me a gourmet-style grilled cheese sandwich, feeding me painkillers, rubbing oil into my sore muscles, and climbing into bed with me. Like most nights, he pulls me on top of him, chest to chest, and buries his cock inside me. It might seem like an odd ritual to others, but after the trauma Ty has endured, this is a tethering for him, preventing a terrifying fall into the abyss of the shame and guilt and torment that so often swallow him.
And for me? It’s the most content I’ve ever felt. The mostneeded and cherished and alive. It’s not pretending or leaping; it’s holding on through the hard. And it’s healing.
So, as his fingers scratch up and down my spine and his suede-and-spices-and-secret-desires musk permeates the room, I already know what my answer will be when he finally poses his question.
He tips my chin, his cognac pools sparkling in the dark. “What happened, Little Moon? Tell me. I can’t fix things if I don’t know what they are.”
“I love you, Ty. There’s nothing to fix. I will do anything necessary to protect you too.”
TY
Rena and I stand in a private lobby before the host of Temptress—the sex club above Eternal Night—waiting for him to process our registration and secure our fifty-thousand-dollar buy-in. She’s clad in a seductive little black dress that hides nothing, with a lacy mauve-and-black bra peeking out above the plunging sweetheart neckline, a butterfly eye mask, a dark auburn wig, and thigh-high boots that elongate her already-long and shapely legs. But all I see is red.
