Page 105 of Let the Light Shine Through

“Yes,” she pants.

I suck the side of her neck into my mouth, swirling my tongue between my teeth, nicking her delicate skin.

“Oh gawd!” Gia’s scream echoes out around us, and I groan, thrusting up from below each time she takes the plunge down my cock. I want to hit her deepest walls. I want every part of her to have my stamp.

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

I let go of her hair to grip where her shoulder meets her neck and notice a small raised bump by my thumb. I move my thumb over an inch, avoiding it, then use the added leverage to go even deeper.

Clutching the back of my neck with her own hand, Gia brings me in for a kiss as she twists her head to the side. It’s sloppy and wet and imperfectly perfect. She can’t get enough of me, and I’ll never get enough of her.

“Baby,” I say, my breath rushing out in spurts, “you’re gonna come with me.”

She nods her head clumsily, and I’d laugh if I wasn’t currently using every fucking muscle in my body to hold off this orgasm. Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long, but I need it all to line up or it could backfire. This might very well be my only shot and I can’t fuck it up.

“Open your eyes,” I whisper against the shell of her ear. “See that?” The shimmering sky above and the twinkling land below, it all blends together in a sea of us. Just us. “This is ours. It’ll always be ours and nothing can ever take it away from us.”

Her hand on my neck tightens and she warns, “Roz…”

“Today and every day after, I’m here with you, Gia, and I’m not going anywhere. I love you,” tumbles from my lips as I thrust upward one last time, spilling everything I have, everything I am, into her.

Gia continues to milk my cock with shuddering contractions from her own release, screaming, “Fucking Roz!” The sound slicing through the waning night air and bouncing off the pool of spring water in the distance to impale my ribs. It burrows into my chest, nestling against my strongest muscle—my heart. It’s never given up on me, even when my head wanted to. Even when I wanted to.

“Did you just say—”

“Yeah. I did. I love you.”

“You can’t.”

“And yet, I do.”

She moves to sit beside me, reaching for her clothes first while I take care of the condom, wiping myself up with one of the blankets.

“Roz,” she starts when her pants are back in place, but I cut her off, telling her, “I’m not asking you to say it back. I just need you to know where I stand. We can go around and around, again and again, just like we did today, but it won’t change how I feel about you. Nothing will.”

Gia’s actions tell me everything I need to know anyway. She can deny it, but I know she loves me, too, even if it’s in her own way. I’ll take her love, any form of it, over her anger or even worse—indifference. That shit’s gotta stop. Love me or hate me, but never act like I don’t matter. I’m here and I’m hers, whether she’s willing to accept it or not.

All she does is exhale loudly, then turn her gaze out toward the trees below and, not used to going topless like me, she shivers next to me, so I wrap the blanket around our backs, keeping my arm draped across her shoulders.

“Oh, uh, I think you got a bug bite or something,” I tell her, remembering the bump I saw.

She stiffens, asking, “What’d it look like?”

“It’s like a sore with some crust on it, I don’t know. It wasn’t a mole though.” I don’t think.

“On my shoulder?” I nod. “That’s not a bite. It’s a scab.”

“Do you think you should get it checked out?” I flinch when I say it, the thought of her possibly getting another scar from a biopsy making my stomach turn. Why do they leave such bad scars? I’ve gotten incisions before and never came away with scars like Gia’s.

She pops a shoulder, shifting the whole blanket. “Only if it doesn’t heal.”

“Let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll take you myself.”

The following silence amplifies nature’s backdrop as we sit quietly with our own thoughts for a while.