Into This River I Drown - By Tj Klune Page 0,76

I’ve never been with anyone but you. This is my first everything.”

I figured that, but it still annihilates me to hear. “But I’ve been with—” I try, only to have him cover my mouth with his big hand.

“I don’t want to hear about anyone else,” he hisses in my ear. “I don’t want to hear it from your mouth. I don’t want to know. I never did. I never watched because I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t. It hurt my heart. You can’t hurt me now. I don’t need that.”

“Cal….”

“Do you trust me?” he snaps.

“Yes,” I say quietly, because I do.

“Then put that down. You won’t hurt me. I won’t hurt you.”

I drop the rubber back in the drawer and hand him the lube.

He uses his fingers first, and he’s slow and careful, heeding my warnings that it’s been a while. He’s quiet while I tell him what to do, no doubt listening for any sounds of discomfort from me. There is pain, but it’s negligible. There is burning as I’m stretched, but I welcome it. He kisses the base of my spine and adds another finger when I tell him to. He kisses my back again when I start to shake at his intrusion.

It’s enough.

He props me up on my knees when I tell him I’m ready, that it needs to be now. There’s a moment when he pushes himself in when I think it’s going to be too much, I’m not going to be able to take him, and I grit my teeth. But I crash through that ceiling, and when his hips are pressed against my ass, there is no more pain. There is only him rising above me, beginning to move back and forth. He’s grunting, holding me at my shoulders, grazing my neck with his fingers. I cry out at a particularly deep thrust and he leans on top of me, his face in my hair, his breath on my neck, and I’m reminded of the days when I felt that breath alone in Little House. Those days of coming home to nothing but memories like ghosts, drowning in a river I couldn’t see. I can remember those feelings, but even after this short amount of time, it’s like peering at them through a murky haze.

But he’s here now, with me. He wraps his arms around my chest and pulls me back up onto my knees, my back against his sweaty chest, forcing me to sit in his lap. He rolls his hips underneath me, and I turn my face until my lips find his.

As he rises and falls beneath me, one arm around my chest to hold me to him, the other starting to jerk me off, I close my eyes and lean my head back against his shoulder. There in the dark, I see the blue, I feel the blue, and it’s overwhelming and it’s huge and it’s overtaking me. I can’t handle it anymore and spill over onto his hand. He feels this and hears my cries and snaps his hips once then twice, and then there is warmth erupting in me and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. His groan becomes a whine in my ear and I tremble against him.

I can feel it, then. His heartbeat. It’s strong as it pounds inside his chest. This causes my eyes to burn and I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s unexpected. Maybe because it makes him more human. He was alive before, but now I know he’s alive. He takes a deep breath behind me and then lets it out.

As we collapse on the bed, him still lying atop and inside me, pressing his lips against the back of my neck, I have a moment to think that things aren’t changing…. No. It’s not like that at all.

As he wraps a big, gentle hand around my throat, finding my lips again, I realize that everything has already changed completely and I can’t go back to the way things were. Not after this night. Not after knowing what this could be like.

The angel Calliel kisses me again, and I begin to think about the future. About the possibilities that lie ahead. About the fact I no longer seem to be alone, because I know he will choose to stay. We’ll continue as we are now and things will be better than they were. I think these things. I think of these things and more.

But….

Even as he gives a contented sigh in my ear,