J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

He framed her face in his hands, kissed her again, deeply. “It means,” he said, almost panting, “don’t stop.”

It had been far too long to simply mean “don’t stop,” but she didn’t push it—she was distracted now by his hand on her breast, pinching her nipple, drifting down to stroke the soft wetness between her legs.

She gasped when his finger slid inside her, and she saw the flash of his teeth when he grinned.

“Two can play at this game, love.”

It thrilled her, hearing that word on his lips. Love. She hid it by turning her face to his chest and nipping his nipple. He jerked and yelped, “Ow!”

She flicked her tongue out and licked where her teeth had just been, sucking and kissing, stroking with her tongue. He relaxed back against the mattress with a low moan, and she kept on, kissing her way down his chest, running her hands over his skin, rubbing her cheek against his belly, reticulated muscles hard against her face. He shuddered as she kissed him there, brushing her lips across the ridges of his abs, dipping her tongue into his belly button. He slid his hands into her hair, pushed it off her face so he could watch her.

She looked up at him, mischievous. As he watched, stiff and breathless, eyes wide, she trailed her tongue lower, lower, until she felt his heat and hardness against the column of her throat. Holding his gaze, she cupped him in her palm, licked her lips, and watched him tremble.

“Should I keep going?” she whispered, teasing, already knowing what his answer would be before he nodded emphatically yes .

She dipped her chin, flicked her tongue out, and slid it over and around that hard, velvet head.

He gasped. Then she lowered her head and took him into her mouth, sucking and greedy and wanting to hear him moan.

He did, loudly. He arched from the mattress, his head kicked back into the pillow, his hands tightened in her hair, trembling, hot. He moaned her name and she loved the sound of it, loved the power she felt, the way he moved, instinctive and helpless in her hands, in her mouth, the taste of him and his heat and smoky scent—

He dragged her atop him and without preliminaries, with only a swift, hard motion of his hips, impaled her so deep their pelvic bones met.

Morgan heard him moan her name again, shuddering beneath her, but she was somewhere else, drunk with pleasure and heat and this new curling hunger that rose up inside her like a wave, like a demon, dark and devouring. She began to move atop him, rocking, making tiny circles with her pelvis, her head tipped back and her eyes closed, the air cool against her burning skin, the smell of rain and lightning in the air. His hands lifted to cup her breasts, he murmured something unintelligible. It sounded like a plea. She didn’t stop; she couldn’t. She was outside herself. She was floating.

He sat up and grasped her around the waist. She grabbed hold of his shoulders and took him even deeper inside, met his thrusts with her own, arched back against his knees, opening to him like a flower. Her hair spilled down his spread legs.

White fire and aching, friction and stroking, the sound of his beautiful voice muffled against her breasts as he kissed her there, urgent, warm lips on her nipples, drawing against her skin. The culmination was rushing at her, bright as a comet, and she was gasping, shaking, saying his name—

“Look at me,” he said, hoarse, and cupped her face in his hands.

Morgan opened her eyes. He was gazing up at her, a look of something like anguish on his beautiful face. “Oh—God—I’m almost—I’m—”

“I want to see you. I want to watch you. Let me watch it happen.” His voice was soft, so soft, almost as tender as his eyes, and it broke her apart.

Half moan, half sob, and she was over the edge, shuddering and shattering and staring down into his face, alarmed at the moisture swimming in her eyes, helpless to stop it.

“Yes, baby, yes,” he whispered, reverent, as her body clenched around his.

He was so beautiful to her then, rapt and wide-eyed at the pleasure he was witnessing—the pleasure he was giving her—that it hurt—it hurt . It burned like acid in her throat.

She started to cry.

“Goddammit,” she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder.

He stilled, tightened his arms around her. “It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not ,” she said, sobbing harder. “It’s not going to be okay! Don’t say that! Don’t lie to me!”

“Shhh.”

He cradled her, he rocked her, he stroked his hands down her back and smoothed her hair. All she could do was hide her face and shake in his arms. He was still inside her, still throbbing hot, unrelieved, and though she wanted to run away and hide he was so warm and so strong and so...damn...wonderful.

God, he was wonderful.

“I h-hate you,” she sobbed against his shoulder.

“I know,” he murmured, stroking her. He pressed a kiss to her hair. “I know.”

He let her calm down, let the crying slow, then stop. He eased her down onto the mattress and settled beside her, brushed her tears away with his knuckles, kissed her hot cheeks. He gazed deep into her eyes and softly said, “I hate you, too, beautiful girl. So much.” He brushed his lips against hers, barely stroking, tender. “So much.”

She bit her lip, turned away. She couldn’t take it—the emotion was too crushing, too terrible, too much . His hand stroked her face, he turned her back to him with gentle fingers beneath her chin.

“Don’t hide from me. You don’t ever have to hide when you’re with me.”

That horrible tightness in her chest again, the welling in her eyes. He kissed the tear that slid over her cheek, caught another with his fingertip and brushed it away. She wanted to turn away again but didn’t, and he saw it, and then there was moisture in his eyes, too.

“ Tu és o amor da minha vida ,” he murmured, his voice breaking. He kissed her with a desperation that took her breath away, a desperation that was matched only by her own. She clung to him, and he moved between her legs and pushed inside her.

“Say it again,” she begged, not knowing what he’d said but knowing , feeling as if she would drown. “Say everything. Tell me everything, Xander, tell me now, before it’s too late.”

And he did. His lips on hers, his body moving inside hers, his heartbeat thudding strong and erratic against her chest, he let the words pour out. Soft and broken and in a language she did not understand, it poured out of him and over her and burned her soul to cinders.

Later, much later, as dawn crept pink and lavender over the hills of the Aventine, Xander woke alone.

Once upon a time, when she was a little girl no taller than the weathered brick lip of the Drowning Well, Morgan’s mother had told her a story.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” she announced with that faraway look in her eye that sometimes made Morgan slightly afraid for a reason she didn’t understand. The song she’d been singing died on her lips as if the wood fairies had snatched it right out of her mouth.

They were walking hand in hand through hazy morning sunshine, knee-deep in the drifts of wild heather that grew like weeds on the brink of the New Forest, watching tiny white butterflies flit with bumpy grace around bluebells and buttercups, listening to the sweet symphony of birdsong and breezes whisper through pines.

“A thtory,” Morgan whispered, enthralled, with the baby-girl lisp she hadn’t shed until she was six, watching her mother’s coffin being lowered into a rime of hard winter ground. She looked up at her mother—alive still on that verdant spring morning—and saw what she always saw: a fairy-tale princess with skin white as milk and a bittersweet smile and a galaxy of sorrow in her leaf-green eyes.