She was in luck, it would seem, because as if listening to her thoughts, Snow’s hands began to wander. His fingers dug into the slope of her waist, dipping between skin and the fabric of her jeans to pull her closer by the hips. She felt his thumbs brushing along the sensitive line of the small of her back and she rolled her hips forward in response, moaning low in her throat at the feel of him against her, already hard and straining in his own trousers.
Jo reached a hand down between Snow’s legs, cupping the bulge there. Instantly, Snow’s hand found purchase in the hair at the base of Jo’s skull, tugging lightly as he arched into her touch. A groan escaped between their mouths as the kiss deepened, Jo swallowing up his needy sound both physically and mentally. She would save up every sound Snow made, if she was given the chance, lock them all up in intricate boxes inside her head and heart, cherished memories that no harm could ever come to. Never again.
Again?
Before Jo’s mind could wander into the thicket of her already tangled thoughts, Snow was breaking their kiss and pulling back, though only enough to rest his forehead against hers.
“Josephina.” The sound of her name in his voice, strained and rough and impossibly low, had that heat between her legs growing more insistent. She could practically taste his voice on her tongue, passed from his mouth to hers in panting breaths. “Let me take you to bed,” he said.
Jo wanted nothing more, was pretty she’d never wanted anything as much. But—
“Here?” Jo motioned around, at the decrepit shack, at the floor near to crumbling, the ceiling all but collapsed. Snow just smirked.
“Now.”
She looked over Snow’s shoulder at the bed, once well cared for despite now being as time-worn as the rest of the place. Outside of reality, there would be no dust, no grime, no danger, like a layer of time and space between them and everything they touched besides each other.
And yet. . .
“What if I break it?” Jo asked in a whisper, voice small. Snow followed her gaze to the bed, the cracking floorboards beneath it, and saw what she saw: any actual, physical weight on it would probably send it crashing down to the first floor. There was no reason to believe that they would weigh anything at all, but Jo couldn’t seem to stop herself from thinking about the middle ground she now seemed to occupy—real but not.
All of a sudden, a touch was gently ushering her attention away from the bed and back to silver eyes and a fond smile. Jo added that smile to one of her cherished memory boxes, just in case.
“Nothing will break,” he said. “Trust me.”
A long moment passed, and then Jo nodded, sealing her decision by recapturing his lips. She would put her trust in him—hand her magic over to him so it couldn’t get away from her if that’s what it took.
Hand her magic over to him. . . the thought resonated oddly in her mind. But Jo chased it away with need.
It took less than a second for their previous hunger to return. It felt almost wanton in its potency, animalistic, like her body had taken control of her mind and led them both on autopilot towards the bed. She barely recognized their clothes being removed, barely felt the bed beneath her back as she laid herself down, reaching out for Snow to follow and whimpering into his mouth when he did.
All she could think, feel,breathewas Snow. The sensation of his hand cupping her breast, his fingers pinching at one of her nipples. The trembling whisper of his voice in her ear and the almost bruising indents of his fingerprints on her thighs.
By the time he was easing his way inside her, her whole state of being had narrowed down to a single point of sensation, a liminal space between existence and non-existence where it was just her, Snow, and the feeling of complete connection binding them together.
When he shifted against her, pulling back just enough to thrust in deeper, Jo unraveled. Each thrust had her crying out, sometimes just broken moans, other times a fragmented variation of Snow’s name, but always loud, always needy and pleading. She would be embarrassed, surely, if she could hear herself, but the building desire for release was a solid enough distraction. In fact, as Snow picked up the pace, slinging one of her legs under the bend of his arm for leverage, she could think of little else.
Jo’s other leg wrapped around the small of his back, ankle digging in probably enough to hurt, but she couldn’t help herself, trying to pull him in as close as she could. She wanted him to thrust harder, to leave marks, to break her down until nothing else remained but the feel of him against her. Her hands clung to his back and shoulders, nails probably scratching red lines into his pale skin, and she was suddenly consumed by the thought that she was breakinghimdown. That when they fell over the edge together, they might never come back.
She also thought that, maybe, that wouldn’t be so bad.
“Snow . . . Snow, please,” Jo gasped beneath a particularly well-placed thrust. She already felt so close, a hair trigger just waiting for that final bit of pressure. Jo had slept with a few men in her before-life, even adding Wayne to that list in the after, but she had never felt such a thoroughly rooted need. It was like her body had an unknown craving that only Snow could fill.
“Together,” Snow panted in response, the staccato of his hips already losing rhythm. “Please, Jo. I want—” It sounded like begging, the cut-off plea almost sending Jo over the edge all on its own. And she wanted to, she was so close, soclose, she just needed that little bit to—
Amidst the roll of their hips and the grind of their bodies, Snow inched a hand between them, offering Jo the last bit of superb friction she needed.
It was not quite a tumble, though hardly a plummet. This fall into ecstasy was the first drop of a roller-coaster, the tandem jump of a skydive. Jo fell fast and hard, whole body tensing and back arching off the bed, but she fell with a deep-seated comfort, a contentment that kept her warm and buzzing from the high even long after she’d come back down.
She had just enough cognizance in the aftermath to feel Snow tense above her, lips mouthing Jo’s name into her neck on a ragged exhale. Then, with an equally contented sigh, Snow was pulling out and away, draping an arm over her waist as he collapsed into her side. Jo thought it only fair that she return the favor, cuddling up to him as best she could and soaking in the first quiet her mind had experienced in what felt like weeks.
A quiet that was not meant to last.
“Snow?” Jo whispered into the silence after what could have been hours. A small part of her cried out in anger at bringing an end to their blissful calm, but that part was a whisper compared to the questions rising up again from the tide of her unsettled mind. Still, she tried to keep them in their bubble, away from time and responsibility. She drew soft circles against his chest with the tip of her finger and tried not to think that she was ruining things.
When he hummed a warm sounding, “Mm?” into her hair, Jo almost lost her nerve, but she swallowed it back, opting for watching her own gentle ministrations rather than looking him in the eye.
“What did you mean?” she asked, hating how timid her voice sounded, how her heart raced. “When you said you couldn’t lose meagain. . . when you said that it had been so long. It’s not the first time you said something like it. What did you mean?”
