The only one.
We break through the surface of my baptismal, and Talent says, “It’s time to breathe now, Lydia.”
All is forgiven.
I open my eyes and blink against the tears on my lashes. Talent kisses the streaks of relief streaming down my temples into my hair.
“If this isn’t real, please tell me now,” I say with vulnerability exploding in my throat. “I won’t survive if it’s not and we don’t stop. It’s … it will be too much this time.”
A small smile that looks like an example and relief all at once curves his swollen lips, and he says, “This is what I’ve been trying to prove to you all along.”
“Talent—”
He dips his head down to kiss the pulse point on my throat. The soft spot below my ear. The corner of my mouth. “Just watch me. Just feel me. It’s been here all along. I’ll show you.”
Lifting my hips as Talent drags my underwear and leggings down my legs, I kick them off my feet and stretch my arms above my head to open myself to him as much as humanly possible.
Take me as I am.
Look at every curve, take in every scar, notice the flaws because I have always and in all ways been a carefully crafted illusion. There’s not a soul from here to the constellations who’s had the opportunity to look this closely for the truth.
I’m imperfect.
I’m as human as you.
I have no excuses.
Talent lifts my leg and kisses the inside of my calf, my knee, the top of my thigh and hipbone. He falls between my legs, and I push his pants down until I can’t reach farther, and then I use my feet to shove the black denim to his knees. Constraint contorts his expression, burrowing his eyebrows and clenching his jaw muscles. His lips are in a tight line, and he falls to his elbows.
Go ahead and fuck me, I’d say to anyone else. But not to him. Not this time.
“Let’s go slow,” I whisper instead. “Let’s make this last.”
Metal eyes unleash the full force of their intensity on me. I’m thin-skinned, thin-veined, and thin-muscled—translucent and exposed with every breath that I breathe. Talent can see all the way through me, and there’s no going back now, sucker. You had your chance for that.
It’s interstellar now.
Holding my wrists above my head in one of his hands, Talent urges my knees wide open. And then he opens wider. Muscle from my pelvic to my femur stretches and burns, but it doesn’t burn nearly as hot as the temperature at my core. Heat spreads through the rest of my body like a structure fire, and I’m feverous and tipping toward delusional.
Go ahead and fuck me, I want to say to him in a way that only he will ever understand—with authenticity and substance. Go ahead and fuck me, please, before I’m nothing but dust and bone.
I try to tug my wrists free from his grip, but Talent drives my wrists farther into the mattress.
“I’m stronger than you,” he says with the grin of a madman on the run. “You’re not getting away from me again. We’re going slow, remember?”
I shake my head as a fiery bolt of lightning strikes and splits me down the middle, catching the bed on fire, too. We’ll go slow next time. And the time after that. And after that. We can go slow forever, but to curb intensity like this is a disgrace.
Or.
Is this what passion feels like? Does passion feel like climbing, and climbing, and climbing? Is passion begging, out of breath, and sweltering?
Passion is a phenomenon.
Passion is sweating in the water, alone together, definitely maybe.
Passion is an open secret.
“Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?” I rub the bottom of my bare feet up and down his calves before hooking my ankles around the backs of his knees, trapping him against me.
Two can play this game, Ridge.
He laughs, pressing open-mouthed kisses across my collarbone. His cock slides between my folds, close but not inside where I want him the most. He says, “You wouldn’t have believed me if I tried.”
The sensation I lost in my hands from his vise-like grip doesn’t go to waste, seemingly finding a new home in my pussy. He can’t move his legs; I can’t move my arms. I circle my hips, flicking my clit with the head of his manhood and purr at the friction. He’s careful to pull away before it gets further than that, drawing out this cruel and unusual torture.
He’s engorged, throbbing, leaking at the tip.
“What are you waiting for?” I ask. My chest heaves up and down.
The entire room burns.
Mischief wanes from his face, revealing integrity and the whole truth underneath playfulness. “Promise you won’t run away from me again, Lydia. We can make it easy on ourselves and promise not to be away from each other anymore.”
Sweet prince still doesn’t understand what he’s asking for, but I’ve decided to stay until he figures it out.
“I promise,” I say.
“I’ll only chase you forever,” he says softly.
Talent slides inside of me, and my heart absolutely, radically, and truly beats for the first time in my life. Like a hurricane making landfall, sensation flattens everything in its path. But my heart has a bone to pick, deadened for so long.
When sensation and heart collide, the impact is so violent, I’m blinded by the blast. I cry out, and Talent releases my wrists to grip the bedsheets like an anchor under our bodies. I cling to him to keep from being abandoned ever again, meeting him stroke for stroke where our bodies are connected.
I open my eyes when the wreckage settles, and my once bleak and sepia-toned existence is now in color. Brand-new eyes sweep across the room, unfocused as I writhe in ecstasy under Talent. Like braille, I sweep my hands across his back to read the way muscle moves over bone. Dragging my nails up his chest, his hazy features improve. But I don’t really see him until I explore his face with the tips of my fingers, dragging them over his hooded eyelids, down the bridge of his nose, across his lips … inside of his mouth. I hook a finger into his cheek and pull. He captures my finger between his molars and bites down before sucking and swirling his tongue around the tip of my pointer finger.
Passion is painfully beautiful.
Amazingly awful.
A loud whisper.
I pull his face closer to mine and kiss him as a familiar stirring I’ve never felt before stirs in the pit of my stomach. I gasp for breath against his mouth; my stomach heaves, pushing against his with every harsh pant.
“Has it ever been like this, Lydia?” he asks in a sex-thick tone as we trade inhales and exhales. “With anyone but me?”
“Never,” I moan. I grip his hips and pierce his skin with my fingernails. “Only you. Only this. Only us.”
He hides his face in my neck and groans, triggering a shiver from the top of my head to the very tips of my toes. My heart beats like wild, spreading lust-blood through my wide-open veins, and the head rush dazes me. Pinpricks and tingles dance across my sultry skin, lifting me higher in the room, and this time I bring Talent with me.
“What do I feel like from inside?” I ask, flicking his earlobe with my tongue. “Has the man who has everything fucked like this before?”
Talent tries to lift himself up to his palms, but the magnetic pull between us won’t allow more than millimeters between us. Brushing my lips across the top of his shoulder, I hold steady on his sides and roll my hips as he strokes harder and deeper inside of me.