wasn’t her past. And there wasn’t a future.
There was just this.
Just this brilliant, white-hot need.
And it was perfect. He pushed his hands down beneath the waistband of her panties, sliding fingers through her slick flesh. She was shocked by the white-hot feel of pleasure there. How it burned.
Gloriously.
She found herself arching her hips in time with the rhythm of his hands, her need escalating inside of her with each glorious stroke. He pushed one finger inside of her and she gasped at the unfamiliar sensation. At the invasion. She knew there would be more. Bigger.
She could feel that part of him still against her. And she shivered. Now wasn’t the time for nerves. She didn’t want fear to have any part of this.
She arched her hips against him, and he moved his thumb over that sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. And pleasure broke over her like a wave. Sending her soaring. She was sobbing with desire. She had never felt anything like this. It was beyond. She could scarcely breathe. Then he wrenched her panties down her legs, a wild look in his eye.
She realized what they were missing.
“I’m on the pill,” she said.
“I...”
“I haven’t...”
He nodded, as if he understood what she was trying to say. But she was pretty sure he didn’t.
Instead, he positioned himself between her legs, nudging the untried entrance of her body, before thrusting into her completely. She gasped, the pain a lot more intense than she had imagined.
And then he started to move. And this was just different than she thought it would be. Raw. Physical. Not soft and romantic with a gauzy veil drawn over it. Something that connected her. To him, his breathing and her own. The beating of their hearts. The bed. The room.
It was everything. Everything real and terrifying that she had never known and always avoided.
And then as she began to ascend the peak she had the thought that this was what she’d been looking for. Something sharp and hard that might match that intense violent grief she had experienced all those years ago. That might transcend it.
But she should have known that it wouldn’t be a sensation of undiluted joy. Of something purely good.
It wasn’t a piece of cotton candy. Sweet and one-dimensional. Fluffy and easily dissolved.
It was sweet and bitter.
There was a darkness here that called to the darkness in her. To the pain that she had experienced. And it was richer for it. She knew that it was. For all the hurtful things they’d endured.
But there, in the midst of the storm, a shaft of light broke through. And she knew that it was brighter for all the darkness around it. That the peak of pleasure would be more exhilarating because of where they had been.
She didn’t need cotton candy.
That was easy. For people who knew easy and needed easy.
She was stronger than that.
This was for her.
She needed it strong. Strong enough to block out the pain.
And this was.
More than. It made her feel like her chest was going to break apart. Like the light in need in her soul was expanding beyond that which she could accommodate. But she welcomed it. Because this was how you found a new way forward. It was a fight. She knew that.
It was why she had stayed where she was for so long. Because she had sensed that. That there was no way she could be new without first going through a hurricane.
And he was a hurricane. A storm that moved through her like a devastating monsoon.
And she clung to him. Like he was the anchor.
The anchor and the stormy sea, all at once. The reason she was being tossed. The reason she was held secure.
The source of her danger and her delight.
His movements became hard, fractured, along with his breathing. And pleasure overtook her thoughts. Pleasure overtook everything. She clung to him as her climax grabbed her and pulled her under, a current she couldn’t fight, even if she wanted to.
And then he broke too, shivered and shook as he took his own pleasure on the heels of hers, and when he collapsed against her, sweat slicked and breathing hard, she realized that he had been in the middle of the same storm.
Not a force larger than nature, but a man held captive by it the same as she had been.
They were slick with rain and sweat and breathing hard. And she clung to him. Because she was afraid he would let go if