THIRTY
Bastien
“This rugged holy man thing you’ve got going on works well on you.” She tugged at my overgrown stubble.
I captured her wrist, pulling her down onto the bed beside me. “If you like it, I’ll keep it.”
“Ha!” She laughed, and just like that, we fell back into that thing we did so well together. “Giving up your power already, Castaneda?”
Her banter almost brought me to tears.
I’d missed her more than I’d allowed myself to admit.
“I left all my power in your hands.” I could hear the lusty frustration lacing my own words, my hands greedy as they traveled her body, stroking her curves and lifting the layers of loose clothing she wore.
I gulped when her body was bare and gleaming in the moonlight, damp skin already hot with anticipation as I caged her in my heavy arms. Collapsing on top of her, I melded our lips, tasting her, touching her, getting reacquainted with my favorite everything all over again.
“I don’t know how I stayed away from you.” I kissed her deeper, not allowing a response or even a breath, our bodies working up a feverish rhythm before my fingertips were touching the wet skin between her legs and sheathing themselves in her warmth for the first time.
Again.
I groaned, her fingernails raking across my shoulder blades as she clung to me, our lips rarely disconnected as we rediscovered the love in our formerly hopeless love story all over again. All the misaligned pieces of me fell back into place as if pulled by an invisible magnet, the very force she held over my true nature incomparable to anything else in my life.
Love.
What a funny little emotion.
“Bastien?” Her lips grazed my ear and sent a thrill down my spine, grounding me in this moment. In her.
“Say it again.” I sucked at the sweat trickling down her neck, collecting at her throat, driving me wild as it beaded between her breasts.
“What?” Her laugh made me crazier for her.
“My name.”
Her grin fell a notch, warmth pooling in her eyes as she cradled my jaw in her palms. “Bastien.”
My lips glided along hers, smile lifting farther as I kissed and teased at the delicious little bow. “You are music to my ears.”
“I don’t know about that.” She tugged at the length of stubble on my chin. “But what I wanted to say was that I’m not on birth control now…or anything.”
She looked awkward, like she hated to bring it up.
She also looked more adult.
Setting boundaries, being straightforward, telling me exactly what was on her mind. Not that Tressa had ever really had much problem with that.
“No birth control, huh? How very Catholic of you.”
A devilish grin widened her cheeks.
“So beautiful,” I whispered, clutching her face in my palms and kissing her like I’d been wanting to, like I’d spent so many nights losing sleep over with her rustling in all four corners of my brain. “So very beautiful.”
Our eyes on fire with simmering emotion, we exploded like dying stars against a lonely black sky, our passions violent, our love pure. Chaos and order, sin and virtue, every bit of us together made no sense at all—and perfect sense just the same.
A beautiful sin, our greatest catastrophe.
In that moment, I allowed myself to admit I loved her far greater than I’d known.
