Lightning flashes through the single grimy window, illuminating his focused, revered expression. His jaw is tight, and his body is coiled with restrained need. When my tremors subside, he begins moving again, quickly working himself back up to a punishing pace. Each impact drives me againstthe wall. The rough wood scrapes my back, but I don’t care.I can’t.He’s hitting something inside me that makes white sparks dance across my vision, leaving me almost unable to think.
“Teagan,” he grits my name. I open my eyes and am met with his dark gaze. His pupils are blown wide, and his control hanging by a thread. “Fuck… I’m going to come…” Easton’s voice strains with urgency.
The confession penetrates the haze of my pleasure.Shit! Did I take my pill this morning?The split second of risk sends a dark, dangerous thrill through me, but I nod. “It’s okay,” I breathe. “I’m on the pill.”
He groans something vaguely resembling, “I can’t,”as indecisiveness flickers across his face. He thrusts a few more times, each one hitting that devastating spot inside me. Abruptly withdrawing on a groan, he fists his cock between us. I watch him fall apart as it pulses and hot ribbons of cum spill across our stomachs. His release is warm against my skin, intimate and filthy.
We stand there, both trembling as the storm rages outside, the sounds now muffled by the thundering of my heartbeat and our ragged breaths.
Easton wraps his arms around me, pulling me into him. His hands stroke my back, gentle and soothing, his touch no longer demanding but tender. “Are you okay?” he asks, pressing a kiss to my hair as he carries me.
I nod against his shoulder, unable to form words. He drags me to his chest as he takes a seat on an old cot in the corner and positions me across his lap. I curl into him, boneless and sated.
“Let me clean you up,” he insists, holding me tight to him with one arm as he stretches down to the floor to grab his discarded shirt from earlier. “I’m sorry.” His eyes fall to the mess on my skin as he apologizes softly. “I haven’t… with anyone since… And I couldn’t?—”
“It’s okay,” I manage as he wipes the cold, still-wet fabric carefully over my thighs and sensitive pussy before thoroughly cleaning the cum from my stomach. When he finishes, he drags the shirt along his abs before tossing it back to the floor.
His hand slides up along my jaw, the rough palm cradling my face with a tenderness that makes my chest ache. He kisses me again and again, each pass of his lips gentler than the last, nothing like the desperate hunger from before. When he exhales against my mouth, the sound is cracked and uneven, like he’s just as undone as I am. “You’re okay,” he whispers against my hairline, as his thumb brushes beneath my eye, tenderly wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized had gathered there. “I’ve got you.”
He pulls a dusty blanket from the foot of the cot over us to keep me warm. After lying us both on the thin mattress, he guides my head to his chest and traces lazy patterns over my skin. Nuzzled against him, I let my eyes close as I listen to his heartbeat, a slow, steady rhythm that quickly lulls me.
“Good night, wildfire.” Easton kisses the words against the top of my head as I fall asleep.
I wake slowly, pulled from my slumber by the warmth and the steady rhythm of another person breathing against me.Teagan. Her name moves through me before conscious thought catches up with me. I tighten my hold around her, enjoying the weight of her in my lap, the softness tucked beneath my chin, and the already treasured reality of not being alone.
The violent wind and rain that drove us here has passed, leaving behind a fragile stillness. When I open my eyes, I’m met with the pale morning light slanting through the shack’s dirt-caked windows. It cuts across the warped floorboards, illuminating particles of dust that float lazily in the air.
Teagan, nuzzled against me, is completely bare beneath the thin blanket wrapped around us both. Her head rests against my shoulder, her hair a wild spill of honey and gold that smells faintly like rain and smoke. Her arms curl around my side, her fingers twitching slightly as she sleeps.
My hand shifts carefully, brushing along her arm, tracing the warm line of her skin as if I need the confirmation that she’s real. That last night was real. That I didn’t imagine the way she softened for me, or how she gave herself over to me so completely. And how—this time—I was able to accept it.
I press my lips to her temple, letting them linger there as I breathe her in. “Wildfire,” I murmur, my voice rough with sleep and emotion.
She stirs almost immediately, her body tightening slightly against mine before softening as awareness returns. Her fingers flex lightly where they rest along my ribs. She tilts her head back just enough to look at me; her eyes are still heavy with sleep.
Teagan stares up at me in silence, a tiny smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. Her still-swollen lips part, and she stretches up to kiss me. It’s slow and unhurried, not driven by the same urgency or desperation as last night. Her mouth moves against mine like this is something we’ve done a thousand times before, like her lips were made to be pressed to mine. When our kiss breaks, she doesn’t go far. She rests her forehead against mine, her nose lightly dusting along my cheek as she settles back into me.
“Are you okay?” she asks softly.
I let out a quiet breath, my hand sliding up her neck to cradle the back of her head, my thumb brushing along her jaw.
“I have a gorgeous, naked woman lying in my lap at sunrise,” I playfully reply, steering her gaze toward mine. “What man wouldn’t be okay?”
“I’m serious,” she huffs, lightly. “You know what I mean.”
I do. I know exactly what she means.She means Rosie.She means the ghost who lives in the quiet corners of me. The life I built. The woman I loved. The promises that didn’t disappear just because time kept moving.
I stare down at Teagan, searching for vulnerability that she’s trying to hide. But I don’t find it, and I realize she isn’t asking for reassurance for herself.She’s asking for me. I know she is.
Her mouth curves faintly, but she doesn’t let it go. “Are you?”
The answer isn’t as simple asyesorno.The truth is complicated.
I don’t feel consumed by guilt as I sit here with Teagan in my arms. Last night didn’t feel wrong. Actually, it feels right in a way that terrifies me, because it means my heart is hopefully capable of expanding. Of making room for something new without erasing what and who came before.
Rosie exists in the foundations of who I am, in the quiet reflexes of memory and love that shaped my life. She might hold my heart—and always will—but I need to come to terms with the fact that she’s gone.
But Teagan…
