Ollie stayed silent as he flipped the water on and washed his hands, studying my face in the reflection of the mirror. Say something. He ripped the paper towel from the roll, taking his time drying his hands as a smile rose, and I shook my head at his audacity. Say something. He crumbled up the paper into a ball before throwing it in the trashcan, and turned toward me.
“Why did you take off running?” Ollie asked as he adjusted his gray joggers around his hips. He pulled down the bottom hem of his white tee and took a few steps to stand behind me so we were both standing in the same mirror.
“I don’t know,” I said, and Ollie wrapped his arms around my waist. My tense body relaxed in his hold as I continued. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
He held my gaze in the mirror, his green eyes glued to my brown ones as if once they separated, he would lose me.
“Would you look at us together.” He nudged his head toward the mirror as he grinned. Two pairs of eyes stared back in the reflection. One pair was mine. The other was his—a vibrant soul, bright enough to compensate for my lack thereof. He was beautiful. I wondered what he saw.
“Right there … you see your eyes?” He asked. “Usually your color is so dark, it’s hard to tell when your pupil ends, and your iris begins. Most of the time, this hollow void dominates you, but look at your eyes now.” I honed in on my eyes in the mirror. They were an amber color I’d never seen before. “The glow … it’s your soul shining through. Your eyes brighten when we’re together, and that is how I know …”
“Know what?”
Ollie smiled and pulled me closer against him. He lowered his head to my ear. “I bring out that light in you. You do feel for me, and I never needed to hear you say it, Mia. All these times I asked you, it was for you to hear it for yourself. It’s only when we’re apart when we’re broken like two jagged pieces—we belong together. I can see it in your eyes, and now you can see it, too. But you always knew, haven’t you? You never needed proof.”
Wordless, I lost myself in this new shade of color he’d shown me. He was able to have this effect on me. There was no logic or science behind it, but the proof was in front of me this whole time. A part of me did always know there was something about him. My enslaved heart knew before my mind could comprehend—the reason I could never shut him out entirely, no matter how hard I tried. It was because he was already a part of me. All along, we’d been connected. My light illuminated in his presence because his soul was the one mine had been promised to.
It was him.
It was Ollie.
“I once asked you to open yourself up to me, to carve me out a door …” his warm breath traced along my neck as he spoke and I had a hard time standing still “… but I need you to let me in entirely. I need all of you, Mia.” I tried to swallow as he pressed against my back. “Why do you continue to pull me in only to push me away?”
My head spun. My ears rang. My Ollie-level raised to complete overdose. He wanted me—all of me. Every broken piece of my body, my heart, and new-found soul, all pierced with glitter made of pain. A hassle to shake away because they were tiny fragments embedded into the deepest parts of me. “Because you scare the hell out of me.”
His gaze left the mirror and peered down at me. “Why?”
“When you’re beside me, you make me feel alive, and when you’re gone, the small fire you built inside me is left burning, reminding me of the way I felt with you. And it’s not good when I feel, Ollie, because when I start to feel, the pain seeps through the cracks, and it hurts.” I drew in a breath. “I can’t stop it; my brain automatically shuts it off, the feelings, the emotions, the pain, you … all of it. It has become a subconscious habit for so many years.”
Ollie’s hands disappeared under my white shirt and grazed my bare skin. “Is our fire burning now?”
I sucked in a breath and nodded. “But what happens when it burns out?”
He pressed his lips together in a grin. “This is us we’re talking about. That will never happen.” He unbuttoned my jeans and lowered my zipper. “I’m not going anywhere, Mia.”
His hand reached over my panties and his long fingers pressed against me. My head rolled back into his chest as my legs went weak. His tongue trailed up my neck as he lightly sucked the sensitive skin, and his skilled fingers kneaded places longing for his touch. “I’ll always fight for you, no matter how many times your habit takes you over, do you hear me?”
My grip around the sink’s edge tightened as I gave up posture. “Yes,” I whimpered.
He parted my legs with his other hand while his erection pressed hard against my backside through his thin joggers. He moved my panties to the side, and his finger stroked up my heat again. Making circles over my knot, he held my gaze in the reflection as the same fever from my sex traveled up my neck. A soft pink glow lit my cheeks as I lost myself in his green eyes. “You are so God damn breathtaking …” he whispered to me.
The fire inside me set ablaze and I bit down on my lip to control it.
“Fuck,” he breathed and withdrew his hand only to pull me into a shower stall and pin me against the tile. His lips found mine and my legs went slack from his torture. “You need to stand on your own, love …” And he dropped to his knees before me, dragged my jeans and panties down to my ankles, and spread my legs. “And this time, stay with me.”
He skimmed a lone finger down my core before dipping inside me, and my breathing shuddered all over again as he pressed his lips to my hips and abdomen. Through each embrace of his supple finger, Ollie lowered his mouth until his lips pressed against my abdomen and my hip. My legs buckled and my arms felt heavy as I tried to keep myself together, and I quivered on the edge of exploding.
“Mia,” he breathed from below, and my eyes blinked open as the rest of me broke apart. “You’re my everything. You’re my heaven.”
“And you’re my hell,” I replied, cupping his face in my palms and pulling him to his feet. My impatient mouth found his before he could stand all the way, but once he did, I kicked off my jeans and panties from one leg and dragged his joggers and boxer briefs down in a need-filled rush of him to be inside me already.
Ollie stripped off his shirt before ripping off mine, then unclasped my bra impatiently. “I need to feel you against me,” he said unapologetically, and picked me up at the backs of my thighs. I wrapped my legs around his hips and our chests crashed together.
He sank inside me, filling me to the brink, and his forehead fell to mine as his eyes screwed shut. Seconds passed for Ollie to regain himself, and for me to overcome the initial shock of him inside me all over again. I held on to the back of his head as he tried to catch his breath. “Fuck, Mia, it’s all too much.”