He feelssofucking good, his palm and his fingers rough, his grip firm as I feel his mouth kissing up my inner thigh. He pauses to suck a mark into my skin, another farther along as if leaving a path for himself to follow next time, and I hope that’s precisely what he’s doing as he releases my cock to wrap both his hands around my thighs and drag me even closer, giving himself better access before his mouth is on me.
At the sensation of his tongue at my entrance, I surrender anyattempts to hold myself up, dropping onto the bed as I moan, gripping my own cock to keep myself from coming. Squeezing harder when the pressure of his tongue becomes one of his fingers, then two after he grabs for the salve and starts using it for an entirely different purpose than I believe was the original intention..
“Aiden.” My hips roll, driving him deeper, his other hand spanning across my stomach to pin me but I only grip it in my own, my nails digging in to his skin to once more leave crescent marks. “Fuck,please.”
“So pretty,” he groans, momentarily pressing his face into my inner thigh before pressing a third finger in and giving me time to adjust, still not wanting to hurt me. “Cy, are you—” I drag the hand he has in mine higher, back up toward my face, forcing him to stand once more as he frames my jaw then kisses me hard. “Ready?
“Yes.” My whole body feels lit up already, so overwhelming that I’m not sure how I’ll survive him, but I will. So we can do this again. And again. And again. “Yes. Stop making me wait.”
He grins as he replaces his fingers with the broad head of his cock, the pressure building until he at last pushes himself inside, kissing me and moaning into my mouth every time he sinks forward a bit more. Overtaking every experience I’ve had before this one until I can no longer remember them.
“Fuck,” Aiden groans, sounding just as overcome. “You feel so fucking good. I’m—Cy, baby, need you to come. I can’t—.”
“It’s okay,” I reassure him, already astounded I’ve made it until now, already not sure how I can take more of him, but I really always have loved a challenge. “We’ve got time.”
So much time. Please, let it be so much time.
Aiden pulls out and when he thrusts in again, I roll my hips with him until he’s as deep as he can be. He stays there and lets me feel him, lets himself feel me until he can’t help but move.Until he can’t stop kissing me as he fucks me with one hand framing my face, his grip firm as if he’s still afraid I could slip away.
“I’m here,” I murmur to him. “You’re not alone anymore.”
He smiles against my mouth. “Neither are you.”
And a few moments later, when it finally does consume us, I think both of us actually believe it.
There’s sunlight streaming in through the trees as I sit by the river, bathing the world in a warm haze that matches the one humming in my blood. Sated, drowsy…happy. I think I’m happy for the first time in a really long time. I stare at the silver watch in my hand and rub my thumb over its surface, unable to stop tracing the three interlocking floral rings like I’ve been doing since he gave it to me.
Only this time, it’s different.
I’m starting to remember some things, I think. Little things. The way my mother would smile at us when we came home for the day, the way my father would laugh until his sides hurt, the way it felt to be part of something. And it doesn’t feel as painful as I thought it might—to remember.
I think they’d be happy, too. I think they’d understand. Loving someone so much that you’d follow them anywhere. Even if it takes you farther away from what you knew before. Even if it means letting go of what you’ve lost.
Beside me on the bank, Cypress is lying on his back fast asleep after we had finally stopped going at each other long enough to decide that we needed some fresh air—for our own well-being as much as the cabin’s—and I’m glad he seems as comfortable here as he had in bed. Perhaps even more so, sprawled out with his left arm thrown above his head and his other against his chest, although it’s his face that I can’t stop studying once I stow the watch in my pants pocket. Memorizing his dark hair in a tangled mess from my fingers, appreciating the tinge of pink on his cheeks and neck from where my whiskers had scratched his skin. A few bite marks, too, and not just there.
I’d called him pretty earlier, but what I’d meant was gorgeous. In a way that fuckingaches.
I should let him sleep for a while. I know I should. He needs it even more than I do, but it’s so hard to resist touching him now that I’ve finally let myself. Carefully, I lie down next to him before my fingertips dust over his cheekbones, trace the bridge of his nose, the bow of his mouth, the scar along his chin. There’s several on his face but this one is the one I notice most. Probably because it runs closest to his smile.
“Itisnice here,” he murmurs, his voice a low, raspy drawl before he starts humming that familiar song, letting me know I’ve been unsuccessful in my attempts not to disturb him. But I struggle to feel guilty for it, so lost in the sound of it, so lost in the memory of him murmuring in my ear, over my skin only a couple hours ago, that it takes me longer than it should to understand what he means when he says, “Would’ve been a good spot.”
Cypress cracks an eye open to see me glaring at him. “Not ready to joke about that?”
“I will never be ready to joke about that,” I growl before continuing my slow perusal.
“Do you…do you mind them?”
“Mind them?” I ask, my thumb now dragging across his bottom lip, down his throat, over his collarbone. Brushing the outline of the bandage lying high over his right shoulder through his—myunbuttoned undershirt, reminding me of how close he came. How closeIcame to not getting this. To not taking what is mine because I was so afraid. Won’t make that mistake again.
“The scars,” he says quietly, and I momentarily stop what I’m doing, looking up at his face to find him looking back at me with that rare vulnerability he sometimes lets me see. “Do you hate seeing them?”
“No,” I tell him, keeping my eyes on his so he can see I’m not lying, so he can be sure there’s not a single thing about him that I hate. “I like having the proof.”
“The proof?” he asks, surprised. “Of what? That I’m broken?”
I sigh, leaning over him to press a kiss to a thin raised line over his chest, then another, then another. “You’re not broken, Cypress. Not to me. All I see is proof you’ve got nine lives. That you survive.”
I hear him chuckle while my mouth is against his throat. “Was your own intervention in a few of those lives, wolf. At least three.”