I’ll never get over this again.
“Kiss me,” she begs more and this time her eyes water and her chin trembles as her fingers linger on my skin.
Then two tears spill out, sliding down her cheeks.
Fuck.
My gaze falls to her lips—parted and trembling, the air between us too charged to breathe.
I should pull back, but she’s looking at me like I’m the only thing left holding her together. My thumb brushes the corner of her mouth, and the second our lips touch, the world stops.
It’s not gentle. It’s not patient. It’s six years of everything unsaid—regret, anger, longing—burning all at once. She gasps into me, and I swear I feel her heartbeat slip right into my chest.
Her fingers clutch my shoulders like she’s afraid I’ll disappear again. The kiss deepens, and she answers with that desperate kind of hunger that tastes like home and hell at once.
For a moment, there’s no past, no rules, no Lucien, just the raw, violent truth of what we are when we stop pretending we can survive without each other.
Her breath mixes with mine, uneven and hot, her lips chasing me every time I try to pull away, like she refuses to let me go this time. My hand slides up the back of her neck, fingers tangled in her hair, and I pull her closer until there’s not a single inch on our bodies not touching.
Every sound of the sea, every wave hitting the shore, fades out until there’s only her pulse crashing against mine.
I hate how good it feels. How right.
Like all the blood on my hands, all the years I’ve spent rotting from the inside, could vanish with one kiss.
She tilts her head and I lose control completely. The kiss turns deeper, rougher, like a fight neither of us wants to win. Her broken sounds get drowned in my mouth as I taste her fight for air.
And when she eventually pulls back, our foreheads still touching, I realize I can’t even breathe without her anymore. I don’t want to.
She looks up at me, lips swollen, eyes glassy like she’s seeing through every wall I ever built. And for the first time in years, Ifeel fully exposed—no armor, no mask, just me and the mess she always saw beneath it.
My thumb is tracing the edges of her jaw like I’m memorizing her again, in case I have to let her go.
If I were a better man, I’d stop. Push her away. Tell her to run before she forgets how dangerous this can get. But her mouth brushes mine once more, soft, barely there, and I know I’ve already lost. Because I’d rather burn alive with her than live one more day without this.
I bury my fingers in her ass, moving her slowly on me but not letting go of her lips. She takes the pace, rocking her hips to meet my thrusts. They get rougher with every move until I feel like I’m eating her alive. I trail my tongue to her neck so I can hear all the raw sounds she makes as I fuck her to oblivion. I suck on her skin, bite her, not able to control myself.
“Don’t disappear on me ever again,” she croaks out, her voice instantly sending me over the edge.
Her fingers tug at my hair as I spill inside her and her body starts trembling in my hands once more.
The air is filled with our mixed grunts and her head falls backward, her body suddenly limp in my arms, fighting for air. I let my head fall on hers and whisper to her ear, without thinking.
“You’re unreal, Kiara.” I’m catching my breath and sinking my fingers to her skin, afraid she’s not really here, afraid she’s just a hallucination. “Like the world tried to make something perfect and then dropped it into my hands just to see me ruin it.”
She looks at me, confusion and sadness in her eyes.
I grab her dress, slide it on her body, then her jacket hanging on the back of the bike, pulling it around her. She lets me dress her, but doesn’t move and doesn’t take her eyes off me.
It’s a chilly night, but her body is warm, almost burning and her cheeks are pink, eyes tired. I want to take her in a steam hotshower and fuck her again, pressed to the shower wall so hard she’ll have bathroom tile imprint on her ass.
“Take me to your bed tonight,” she whispers.
I stop mid-motion.
If I take her to my bed, we’ll never get out of that bed, and that sounds like a dream life to me.
But I just can’t have that.
