God, I love this man.
I belt out a laugh, tears still sliding down my temples, arms still bound. “I’m not sure this is the passion he was getting at or the way he approached missed notes.”
“For his sake, let’s hope it was.” With that, his lips quirk into a smirk, he notches himself at my entrance, and he slides inside me.
After a few weeks apart, the stretch from his substantial length and girth ripples through me. Glorious agony.
He freezes, affording us both a chance to adjust as he wheezes, “Fuck,” and eventually manages, “This … you are my heaven, Zar.” Intensity floods him. “My purpose will always be to love and protect you. Nothing will ever be too trivial. If you were dizzy, I’d stop the world from spinning.”
So heart-wrenchingly romantic.
But since he can’t resist teasing, his hand glides through the valley of my breasts, kneading them and tweaking my nipples along the way. The rough pads of his fingertips trail to the flat plane of my stomach, the dip of my ribs, the nooks along the apex of my legs. Every skim is ecstasy and torment, the perfect brush, but not quite where I want it.
He settles into a rhythm, working himself a little deeper each time, until I’m writhing beneath him, pleading for more, and he’s hovering over me, furiously breaking me free from my bindings. He pulls me upright, dragging me to the edge of thepiano. My feet stutter over the keys, his thighs knocking into some of their own to offer us a clunky jingle as he palms my lower back to keep me in place. Then he slams into me.
I’m not sure when he shed is clothing, but standing before me is a god in nothing but glasses. He doesn’t need them to fuck me, of course, but I confessed to how sexy they were on our honeymoon, and he looks pretty smug about it right now.
Deserving.
Though I suppose the sight of me wearing nothing but the diamond collar of thorns is as devastating to him.
As soon as I throw my arms around his neck, he fists my hair to wrench my head in the angle he wants, and his mouth captures mine. His hunger grows with every press of his lips, every probe of his tongue, every pump of his hips. A triumphant groan flows from him when I fumble with my footing to pull him in deeper.
He kisses with an all-consuming vehemence, like this is where he’s most himself and he’s desperate to devour the unseen, authentic pieces of me in return. Restoring me with a sanative tonic and searing the deepest recesses of my being with his brand of possessiveness. And I gladly give him everything I am, confident he can shoulder it.
The star-speckled sky drifts inside. Floral scents and echoed notes. A balmy breeze and heavenly perch in yet one more city with him—all of them the best destinations of my life because of the man willing to ruin me and enwrap me in equal measure.
With our own twist on the coda, he releases my lips, cradles my face, and hitches his piercing blues to mine, intent on vowing through each shallow breath and mind-blowing caress that he sees every part of me—the ugly, callous, and ruthless skill used for a life I’m not sure is mine and the heart who dreams of more, who loves with every chain of my DNA. It’s a gaze I never want to let go of, one I hope to hold until my last breath.
We detonate as one—no me, no him. He and I are two halves of the same soul, brandishing love and loyalty alongside wickedness. And in this hideaway, in his embrace, I’m delivered.
My spine arches, my head falls back, my hair tumbles to the piano, and his lips coast from my breasts to my collarbone to my neck. We’re a tangled mess of sweaty limbs and heaving chests as his thrusts grow sharp and ragged, and a tendril of red-hot blinding pleasure snakes around us with a savage bite. Tingles, spots, heat, and shivers. I whimper and moan and shriek to a melody of his groans and uncomposed impromptu chords, invigorated by the molten rush of him spilling inside me. There’s nothing like being filled by him.
“This is absolutely how all composers should work,” I mumble into the crook of his neck, too rubber-limbed to move.
Amusement peals from his chest before he gathers me in his arms, carts me to the bathroom, and cleans me with his mouth until I’m bellowing ecstasy from my lungs and soaring over the blissful cliff again. Then he massages my aching muscles, draws us a bath, and pampers me in the way I’ve missed so much. Even grooming without him felt bleak.
And though he protests at first, I return the favor—cleaning him with my mouth, massaging his sore muscles, and washing every inch of him so he can see we’re a team. We don’t talk much during any of it, but his eyes stay fixed on me, and his breaths carry the weight of comfort and understanding. After nearly two decades of trying to atone for his mother’s death by caring for everyone else, he accepts that I want to take care of him too.
Once he brushes and blow-dries my hair and lotions my skin, he tucks us under the covers with half my body draping his, shrouds me in his autumn-exodus scent, and spoils me with soothing scratches.
“I went to see your father.”
There’s no hiding the shock from my reply. “What? How?”
“You have your ways of finding things, and I have mine, Zara. Regardless, I located the camp and paid him a visit.”
“That was … reckless.” I stall for a beat because I hear the hypocrisy in my rebuke, but still. “How did it go? He must have been furious.”
“He was—at first. But I think he’d half expected me, and I came with a peace offering—the file of transgressions my father had collected on him. He claimed he’d had nothing to do with Shep or Beck.”
I lift up on my arm to study his face. “What did you give him for that information? The outdated transgressions might’ve gotten you in the door, but—”
“A fellow KORT chair told me you weren’t working for us. So, since your job was to infiltrate La Lune Noire, it wasn’t a leap to assume your client was my enemy. I offered my life in exchange for yours.”
He says that all so matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing, and I have warring impulses to punch him and hug him.
“Why would you do that?” I bolt upright, the sheet falling as my frustration mounts at how that could have gone. “What the hell were you thinking? He could have taken you up on it. What about your family? How could you do that to them?”
