Page 273 of Breathe Like Hell

One of his hands slid between my legs, fingers stroking lightly, as if he needed to remember how I felt.

“You’re so perfect,” he murmured against my mouth, sliding one finger inside of me, the tension easing from his body as he did it. “Here, and everywhere else. So soft.”

He knelt between my thighs, replacing his finger with his cock.

“Fuck,” he groaned as he pushed deeper.

The scent of his kapnos wrapped around me with its darkness, its fullness. He was every part of the forest all at once. Being an angel, I could smell it even better than I could before, and it filled me with beautiful shadows.

Micah pumped into me, thrusting harder for a minute before slowing.

All his movement slowly melted into stillness, into a moment of shared breath and nothing else. I didn’t angle my hips, didn’t try to make him start fucking me again as he slipped out of me. Our sex wasn’t about orgasms tonight.

He was grasping for normalcy. I was grasping for him.

Micah laid on top of me, still holding most of his weight with his forearms, and I tried to encourage him to relax. I was strong now, almost indestructible. Slowly, his heavy body relaxed into mine, his muscles going lax, his breathing evening out. He turned his head to lay his cheek against my collarbone. I wove my fingers through the hair on the back of his head, lightly scratching with my nails, tracing along his neck.

“I love you,” he mumbled, wrapping an arm around my waist, pushing his hand between me and the bed.

“I love you, too,” I whispered back.

“You brought me back. What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. It couldn’t have been as simple as the shark teeth or my desperation or my tears—none of those things worked in any of the previous months I’d been trying.

“Why did you?”

Tears welled up in my eyes and my breath hitched, a sob rapidly claiming all the air in my lungs. Micah easily slipped his other hand around my waist and rolled us over, so he was on his back, and I laid on top of him, my cheek against his warm chest, his hand molding to my skull.

“Because I needed you here. I can’t live without you,” I said quietly, soft cries infiltrating my words. I didn’t mean to cry, truly, but it was difficult not to.

“But you did live without me.”

“No. I didn’t. And neither did Mason. I’m not strong like you are, and I can’t help him as well as you can.” I sniffled, curling my fingers against his chest. “I don’t think we would have had much time left,” I admitted, feeling the weight of the truth in every word.

Mason and I wouldn’t have had many months left, had Micah not come back. I’d been doing my best to help him through every fracture, pull him up from below the surface of the water when he became unable to push back against his nature, but it wouldn’t last forever. He seemed to get slightly better for a few months, enough that I could breathe sometimes, but it only got worse again.

And what do Thrausians do?

They wait to die.

Micah’s words, in my head. Spoken a lifetime ago.

“I’m really proud that you could do it at all,” Micah murmured, stroking his hand along my hair. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just wanted to know why you’d care to keep trying for so long.”

“Because I’m not done loving you. Okay?” I lifted my head, my teary eyes meeting his. “I will never be done. I had to keep trying to find you.”

Micah continued to hold my gaze, but he didn’t respond.

He didn’t need to.

The amount of love I felt in his eyes could move mountains, level forests, and part the sea. Galaxies full of stars, labyrinths full of secrets.

I leaned up to kiss his mouth, my wet hair cascading around my face like a curtain, blocking us off from the rest of the world, trapping me in the safety he made me feel. I could be held in the palms of his hands, protected there. I wanted him to feel safe with me, too.

Predator saves prey.

Prey saves predator.