And within this breathless dark, she’s so fucking beautiful. A frozen star bathed in twilight, ruinous and devastating.
I brush my thumb across her lips, aching to taste them. Her fingers curl over mine, lacing our hands together in response, and my entire body ignites. I surrender to the hunger burning through my veins, desperate to give her these fleeting seconds.
Billions of light-years away, two black holes merged in a violent collision, their gravitational waves sent rippling through the fabric of space and time to eventually reach us here, now—resonating in the space between our pounding hearts as I slant my mouth over hers.
The impact is cataclysmic.
The instant her lips part against mine, I’m pulled into her. I tunnel my fingers into her wet hair, cradling the back of her head against the sand as I crush my mouth harder to hers, deepening the kiss.
A groan is torn from my throat as my tongue sweeps hers, tentative for a moment before she moans, then I’m a rising tide of molten need. She inhales deeply, stealing my breath to reclaim her own, and I hungrily, greedily steal it right back. Our bodies move on instinct, bridging a divide we’ve held in place far too long.
Her leg slips through the slit in her skirt to curl around my hip, boot heel digging into my thigh, pulling me closer as another surge of icy tide washes over our calves. I drag her body half beneath mine, falling heavy over her with the surrender to gravity. And we align—heart to heart, pulse to pulse—two tidally locked stars, flaring in a single beat.
Sensation and need build to a crescendo. A symphony rising higher, louder.
Something primal breaks loose at the gentle vibration in her throat, and I angle my head, bracing my palm along her jawline, my thumb sweeping her skin as I savor her, fierce and ravenous, tasting salt and life and sweet, intoxicating want.
“God—fuck,” I groan over her mouth, my restraint stretched unbearably thin as the soft contour of her body meets with mine, perfect in our symmetry.
“You came back for me,” she whispers against my mouth. Her hand in my hair tugs, urging me even closer. It takes every shred of my control to resist, to bury the darker desires clawing at my skull.
“I will, always.”
The moment the eclipse reaches totality, I feel it down in my marrow, fine-tuned. This obsessive fear of losing control, of losing her, tightens my grip.
A dull throb pounds at my temples, and I push back against the pain being this close to her brings. I’d cross an entire goddamn ocean for her. Fight the destructive waters of my mind. Fuck, to keep her just like this, I’d let the pain burn me alive.
As the moon covers the sun, devouring the last traces of light, the shadow claws forward, urging my hand higher, to seal tighter. Black filaments invade, compelling me toward this monstrous act—to claim her final moments beneath the rising constellation of stars.
My fingers tremble at her throat, balanced precariously between tenderness and threat. Collins gasps against my mouth, her breath shallow and quick. Fire lashes against my bones as the dark tide surges, the violent impulse to take her last breath.
As my hand collars her throat, I kiss her harder.
As my body strains against the painful urge, I clutch her tighter.
As the insidious force all but strangles me, I breathe her in deeper.
And as a crown of fire ignites the dark sun, casting a blazing halo around shadow, my muscles coil brutally tight, bones locked in a vise as I desperately deny the ritual. Fighting the compulsion to capture her echoes at the brink of annihilation, in the final pulse of her fading heartbeat.
When the system detects an anomaly, it calls for a complete shutdown.
This crucial moment of retrieval, to recover that lost unit of time, slips away like the last grains of sand from my grasp.
Gone.
And still, I hold on tight—so tight she winces, and a breath shudders out of me as I force myself to loosen my grip.
Darkness pours across the shore, draping us in the umbral shadow of totality. I capture her mouth in another fervent kiss. My tongue skims her lower lip, tender, tasting?—
Her breath catches sharp, her body clenching in pain. “Orion,” she whispers over my lips, her voice going breathy. “Something’s wrong.” She flinches. “My heart?—”
Dread is a monster ripping open my chest. “I’m right here,” I say, hand pressed fiercely to her chest. “I’m not letting go.”
Above, the sky darkens in mirror of the void thrashing within me. Desperate, I press my forehead to hers, eyes fastened shut against the suffocating agony. Fingers dug into the hard sand, I clutch the dip of her lower back, arching her body into me.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, jaw tense. “I’ll come for you. I won’t lose you to the dark waters.” I pull back and kiss her forehead, her cheek. “Not ever, Collins. I will never let go.”
My left hand remains centered in the delicate slope of her chest, feeling each jagged inhale and exhale, counting every precious, irregular beat of her heart before her rhythm slips…
