“Fuck,” I groan, my forehead pressing to hers, my voice rough and broken. “You feel like heaven. My world. My heaven.”
She gasps under me, my shirt has fallen off her face, but her eyes stay closed, her lashes dark against her flushed cheeks. The belt keeps her wrists bound tight above her head, her body helpless, but the way her hips arch up, desperate for more, tells me she loves it.
I draw back slowly, almost all the way out, her body a tight glove around me, before I slam back in, making her cry out.
“That’s it,” I rasp, my teeth dragging across her throat, her pulse a rapid flutter beneath my lips. “Sing for me. Let everyone know who owns this perfect pussy.”
Her moan shreds into a whimper, but it’s thick with need, her body a taut, trembling offering. Her walls flutter around me like she’s already close again, her body a symphony of need and desire. And I fuck her, my body a relentless, demanding promise, her cries fill the room, her body a sweet, torturous haven I never want to leave.
“So fucking needy. Look how soaked you are, glistening on your thighs. All because we tried to recreate a scene from your cozy kinky book.”
“Yes—oh god, yes,” she pants, tugging against the worn leather belt, the veins in her wrists prominent as she strains but keeps her hands above her head, her spine curving until her chest arches high, nipples dark and pebbled in the sunlight.
“Greedy little thing.” With my right foot planted solidly on the cool hardwood floor, I reposition my left leg to drape over her trembling thigh, the muscles in my calf flexing with the effort. Her free leg, the one that isn’t pinned beneath mine, gets pushed up to her heaving chest, the position tilting her hips upward, exposing the slick, swollen flesh where we’re joined. “Not satisfied until you’re falling apart, are you? Until I give you more than you can handle.”
My calloused hand slides between our sweat-slicked bodies, finding her clit, swollen and hot. I circle it mercilessly with the pad of my thumb.
Her head thrashes against the couch, dark hair splayed like a halo. “Lucian—too much—”
“There’s no such thing.” I press harder, grinding into that spongy spot deep inside her with every deliberate stroke of my cock, feeling her inner walls flutter and clench around me likea vise. “You can take everything I give you. Every shuddering orgasm, every throbbing inch. You were made for me. Say it.”
Her voice cracks on a scream that tears from her throat as she comes again, her inner muscles convulsing around me in rhythmic waves so powerful my vision whites out at the edges, stars dancing behind my eyelids.
“Say it,” I moan into the shell of her ear as I keep fucking her through it, the obscene wet sounds of our bodies meeting filling the room.
“I—I was made for you!” she sobs, voice hoarse, broken like shattered glass. “Lucian—I can’t—help.”
“That’s it,” I groan, my thrusts turning ragged, desperate.
Her raw, keening cries unravel me completely. Molten heat floods my spine, my balls drawing up tight against my body, and I bury myself as deep as physically possible, spilling into her with a guttural roar that tears from somewhere primal inside me. My entire body shakes with the force of it, every nerve ending alight as I empty myself inside her in hot, pulsing waves.
But I don’t let go. Even when my trembling body gives out, collapsing against her sweat-slicked form, I’m still gripping her wrists, still pressed so deep she can’t possibly escape.
I lower my forehead to hers, gazing into her soul as our breath mingles in ragged pants, her lips swollen from my kisses. “You’re mine. Always mine. No book. No fantasy. Just us.”
And when she whispers back, voice wrecked and body trembling beneath me like an earthquake, “Always yours,” I know with bone-deep certainty I’ll never let her go again.
37
Celeste
Itug at the collar of Lucian’s favorite band tee, the cotton worn thin and buttery-soft from a hundred washings, sighing at the scent that clings to everything he owns. I french-tuck it into the high-waisted black leather skirt I bought online the last time I was with my sister. I pull the scuffed combat boots over my matching socks. Selene swears these boots make her invincible; the whole ensemble feels like a private alchemy.
My matching sets are my language of control: coordinated colors, crisp lines, the quiet announcement that I am composed and therefore safe. I wear them because they keep questions at bay. But this looseness feels like permission. These boots have stories scuffed into the leather by someone that I love, a man’s shirt that hangs like a secret. It’s reckless in the best way. It’s messy in a way I’ve been afraid to be.
I study my reflection and smirk.
Not bad.
And still, it isn’t the leather or the cotton that has my pulse doing cartwheels. It’s Lucian. Of course, it’s Lucian.
It’s been a few weeks since we arrived in Shadow Grove, and we’ve settled into a steady rhythm; tonight, he has something up his sleeve. He planned whatever this is, and somehow it involves lists and timing and a stubborn attention to detail that makes my stomach flip.
The floorboards protest beneath my boots as I descend the final steps, my fingertips grazing the smooth, worn banister. I immediately spot him, his dark silhouette against the kitchen tiles, broad shoulders hunched forward, muscled forearms braced against the granite countertop. His hair falls across his forehead as he glowers at his phone, that signature scowl etched into his features like it was carved there, the one that makes even the bravest souls step aside in hallways.
But the moment his eyes find me, that hardened mask fractures. The tight line of his jaw softens, the almost imperceptible hitch in his breathing, those gunmetal-gray eyes flashing silver like storm clouds illuminated from within.
“Jesus, Celeste.” His voice scrapes low, rough velvet over gravel. This is different. This is liquid heat pooling in the syllables of my name.
