Our hips flush, and we swallow each other’s moans as he grinds his length against my core, giving me a tease of every inch I’ve been craving. None of it feels like enough, and I’m not surehow anything else ever will again. It’s all I can do to bring us closer—merge our beings.
Both of his hands find my ass, scooping me higher as my legs wrap around his waist. I feel the vibration of my name leaving his mouth, and I swallow it with hope I’ll trap his voice inside me forever.
We’re a clash of teeth and lips and tongue, hard lines and soft hands, trembling limbs and impassioned whispers.
He takes me off the hood, and I cling to him like he’s my tether to the very orbit of the planet as he carries me up the front porch steps to the door. He holds me against it, his lips moving across my jaw and down my neck, before falling off my shoulder as he looks down to fumble with his keys. The door falls open under our weight, and August stumbles us inside.
We’re a mess of breathless caressing, and I work to catalog every movement of his body and every sound leaving his lips. It’s one of those moments that feels deeper than real, brighter than color—it’s innate and all-consuming. The kind of moment that tilts your axis, restructures your being, and alters your soul.
He devours me—hand sliding up my spine, teeth nipping at my lips, the wet slide of his tongue against mine, his dizzying taste flooding my senses. The twist of his hair beneath my fingers and the grind of his body against my own. My breath catches as his teeth drag against the hollow of my throat, and I’m entirely unaware of the place he’s taking me until he sets me down against a bookcase in the den.
It’s the kind with an expansion at hip-height, providing a wider countertop space and a cabinet beneath, the shelves above it lined with a colorful array of books. My back rests against the spines as August stands between my legs, hands falling from my thighs and to the counter where I’m sitting, boxing me in the same way he was before.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, allowing me to catch my breath, even though I don’t want to. I don’t survive on oxygen anymore. He’s all I need for my heart to beat. Our staccato breathing is the only sound in the otherwise silent house—a sensual purr.
His lips part with rapid breath, pupils blown as his eyes track the movement of my hands when I glide my palms down the center of his chest, dipping underneath the lapel of his flannel and moving down his arms, taking it off him. He works with me, sliding it off and allowing it to fall to the floor. Our foreheads press together, and both our gazes fall to see the way my black tennis skirt has ridden up my legs, revealing bare skin wrapped around his hips.
“You couldn’t find the word earlier,” he rasps breathlessly, fingertips inching up my thighs.
“What?” I ask, voice shaking at the tease of touch.
“Earlier, you stopped short when you were searching for a word to describe what this is. What we’ve been doing all these weeks.”
I nod.
“The word is falling,” he says softly, slipping his hand beneath the hem of my skirt. “We’re falling, Elena, and I’m so goddamn tired of pretending I’m still standing on the ledge trying to make a choice when we both know that I dove headfirst the minute you showed up on my doorstep.”
“August.” My head drops back against the shelves, his name leaving my throat in a whimper.
He lifts an arm, cupping the back of my neck and forcing me to look at him again. Those green eyes blaze behind his fogged glasses, and in desperate need to see him clearly, I raise trembling hands to his face, pulling the frames off him.
“I want to see your eyes when you finally speak the truth your mouth has been too afraid to voice,” I whisper. “They’re always honest, even when you live in lies.”
“What’s the truth?”
I set them down beside me before bracketing his jaw, pulling him close enough that I can feel his breath, but keeping enough distance that I can watch his emerald irises catch flame when I say, “You still belong to me.”
They flare as his lips feather over mine. “This is the last first time, Elena.”
Every atom in my body comes to life at the rough promise.
“The last first time,” I echo back, claiming his mouth again.
24
VIOLET
“MOVEMENT” - HOZIER
I slidemy hands up her plump, golden thighs. Continuing my ascent, I slide beneath the hem of her cut-off sweater and help her lift it over her head until Elena’s sitting in front of me in nothing but a threadbare, lace bra, and a black tennis skirt bunched above her hips.
Her skin is glistening, reflecting the fading sunlight shimmering through the window with every rapid heave of her chest, looking like the ultimate personification of heavenly sin.
I’ve seen her naked before, but this is something else entirely.
Before was reluctant vulnerability and desperate caretaking, or the slow exploration of two people trying to determine if their connection was worth setting the entirety of their world on fire.
The flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and passion-hazed eyes staring back at me now are that of a connection deeper than outside influence—something so intricately written in the stars that even when it’s wrong, no outside force was going to stop it from happening.
