but with Devlin, it’s different. I trust him completely. I know that he understands my limits, and that he would never play this game if he didn’t know how. “Yes,” I whisper, then close my eyes as he takes full control, his cock thrusting deep inside me as my body tingles and a wild euphoria takes over me, painting my rising orgasm in bright colors and vibrant sensations.
I feel him inside me. I hear his groans mixed with his low words telling me to come with him. But I’m not me anymore. Instead, I’m sensation and experience, passion and pain, I’m at that place we all try to reach and so rarely get there. And as I burst apart—as I explode completely in his arms—all I know is that I actually reached the stars.
He eases off me, and I draw a deep breath, snuggling close as his arms go around me. “I love you,” he whispers, the words bringing me even more pleasure than the orgasm and filling me up all over again.
“I know,” I say. “I love you, too.”
I’m not entirely sure how he managed it, but he’s shifted us around. We’re both on our sides, spooning, and he’s behind me with one hand reaching over, lightly stroking my pussy. “Keep that up, and we’ll need a round two,” I tell him.
“I’d be okay with that.” He pauses, then adds, “You liked it.” As he speaks, his hand snakes between my thighs, as if how wet I am is proof of that truism.
“God, yes.”
“Tell me why.”
“You know why. I’ve gone from flirting with danger to flirting with you.”
He chuckles. “If that was flirting, I’m very interested in your definition of actual sex.”
I have to laugh. “Good point.”
“But you haven’t answered the question.”
“You know why,” I say. “Because I flirt with danger.”
“It’s more than that,” he says, and there’s a rawness in his voice that compels me to shift in his arms so that I’m facing him. “Pain, pleasure,” he continues. “They’re intimate.”
I nod, his words cutting straight to my core.
“You’re at your most vulnerable when you experience pain or joy. But joy can be ripped away, and pain can go beyond what’s safe. But trust … Trust is the most intimate thing of all.”
“Yes,” I say, my eyes pricking with tears. “I trust you completely. I know you’ll always take care of me. And, Devlin,” I add, reaching up to stroke his cheek, “I’ll always take care of you, too.”
Chapter Eight
Devlin dozed, but he never managed to sleep, and when he finally decided to give it up and pry himself out of bed at three in the morning, her words still filled his head. I’ll always take care of you, too.
It was truer than she realized. She’d always taken care of him, always been that compass that kept him at true north. His version of true north, anyway. He and Ellie differed on the details, sure, but they’d never wavered in the truth of what they saw at the core of each other.
The only real question was how he’d survived so long without El in his life.
And the only real answer was that he hadn’t. Not really, because how the hell could he have been alive all those years with a piece of his heart missing?
He pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms, then paused by the bed, looking down at her. At his woman who had pulled his focus from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. And why? It was a question he’d asked himself on and off for years. It wasn’t as if her beauty had claimed him in that first moment. She was pretty, no doubt about that, but Ellie had never had the kind of cover model looks that would have turned the head of an eighteen-year-old boy.
On the contrary, at sixteen, she’d been a bit awkward, as if she hadn’t yet become comfortable in her woman’s body. There’d been a shyness about her, too, and that wasn’t something that usually compelled him, not even back then. And yet compelled him she had, and with such force and power that she’d left his head spinning.
He’d had the same effect on her; he knew that. But why?
He’d never found the answer, and maybe it didn’t matter. But what he believed in his heart was that they were two halves of a whole. Proof that soulmates truly existed. Which was, of course, why he was only truly alive when he was with her.
He bent over