Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,56

the pace next time.”

God. She pulsed around him. Heat flooded her stomach.

He dropped down over her, braced on his arms, and started to move. Pulled nearly all the way out, a slow drag, and then thrust back in again. He did it again, again; put his face in her throat and breathed raggedly there while he picked up a rhythm – brutal and fast, just like she’d wanted.

Rose dug her nails into his biceps, locked her legs around his waist, and held on for dear life.

She’d known he was strong, but now she could feel it. In every flex of his biceps, and hips, and back. It was good the bunk was cast plastic bolted to the wall, because a real bed with a headboard would have rattled and banged against the wall. She could feel him deep inside her, sparks crowding her vision, lighting up her nerves every time he hit that place, each time he was buried to the hilt and his hips slapped bruises against the insides of her thigh.

It was good. So good. Pleasure wound with painful tightness in her belly. She was making little wounded sounds with each relentless thrust, struggling to meet him stroke for stroke, pinned down by his weight above her.

So good, so good…

Release slammed into her. Hard, wrenching spasms that left her shuddering and gasping. She closed her eyes and tried – and failed – to catch her breath as he thrust a few more times, and then tensed up and came with a low moan. Her sex gripped him, pulsed around him, as the heat of his release spilled inside her.

Thank God for department-mandated IUDs.

His arms gave out, and for a handful of seconds, he lay full atop her, heavy and crushing. Not that it mattered; she couldn’t breathe anyway.

“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, God, oh…oh…”

He pushed up again, so he hovered over her on shaking arms, his face a wrung-out blur above hers.

“Rose?” His brows drew together. He reached with one hand and touched her face. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Her voice came out choked. Lance’s hand, she saw as he withdrew it, caught the light, his fingertips wet.

Because she was crying, she realized. A truth that, once acknowledged, broke her completely.

“No,” she said again, and closed her eyes, and then covered them with her hands for good measure. But it was no use. The tears had started, and couldn’t be stemmed. They slipped between her fingers, and rolled down her temples, and a sob hitched in her chest. It was terrible, just terrible – and then it got worse.

“Sweetheart, come here.” Lance slipped free of her, and his hands found her arms and pulled her upright.

“No,” she protested, weakly, but went unresisting when he sat back against the wall and pulled her into his lap. He bundled her in close – cuddled her – with her head tucked beneath his chin, and his arms warm and strong around her. They were sweaty, skin slipping and sticking, but he didn’t seem to care as he rubbed her back and murmured soothing noises against her hairline. She tried to fight the tears – but finally gave into them. Better to get them out and be done with it. She pressed her face to his warm, damp chest and let them come, messy, breathless sobs rattling her whole body.

She cried for Beck, for his stupid bravery, and his blind thirst for revenge, his utter devotion to a cause that had taken him from her.

She cried for Frankie, and his inherent sweetness, his insistence on befriending her; cried for his lost arm, and his newfound, well-deserved happiness – bought with flesh and blood, and a stern man’s too-late self-awareness.

She cried for the Rift, for the constant rain, and the unending battle. For the innocents displaced, and killed, and tortured.

Cried for Lance, who loved her though he shouldn’t, who’d been kind to her when he hadn’t needed to be.

And she cried for herself. For her shriveled, broken heart, and all the grace she’d lost along the way – if indeed she’d ever had any to start with.

She cried until her eyes were dry, and gritty, and her sinuses were swollen, and she felt like a boil that had been lanced – the word play there brought a quick, cold smile to her lips, one he must have felt against his chest, because he said, “Better?”

She sat back, slowly, reluctant to meet his gaze – but when she did, he only looked at her worriedly,