Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
“Hold on, just a minute,” she said. “I want to feel you. I want to…oh.” She moved more quickly, back, forth, back, forth, until he couldn’t hold out any longer. He lifted his hips, and with one upward plunge, he came with a roar, spilling into her, the pleasure so dizzyingly powerful, he swore he lost consciousness for a minute. The bliss exploded and then sizzled through his veins, like the dying sparkles of those fireworks, dripping and cascading its last glittery light into every corner of his broken body.
Only in that moment, he didn’t feel broken.
He didn’t feel scarred or ruined.
He felt alive. He felt powerful, but not in any way he’d ever experienced power before. He wasn’t even sure that was the right word, but he didn’t have another.
Her hair was tickling his shoulder, the slight weight of her body covering his own. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to run his hands along her spine, to feel each bump and curve of her perfect creation. But he was still shaking, still coming down from the wild cascade of feelings and emotions, and he still didn’t quite trust himself.
Autumn sighed, holding him instead but gently, as though she knew he couldn’t take much more than that. He’d just experienced sensory overload on a scale he never had before. And though it’d been the most amazing experience of his life, he needed to process, to come down off the high, to relive it again and again, but only in his mind.
For now.
The pleasure he’d just experienced had rearranged him.
Maybe she’d be willing to do this again. But even if she wasn’t, he could live in the memory of this moment for the remainder of his days, even if only a handful existed.
Autumn remained still, seeming to know he needed it. Her. His angel. Her breath ghosted over his skin as she whispered, “I made a boy of moonlight.” She paused, kissing his cheek lightly, so lightly. “And he turned me into the burning sun.”
Chapter Thirty
The sun crested the lake, the molten water sparkling gold. The world was once again coming alive.
Autumn brought the coffee cup to her lips, taking a small sip of the hot liquid and adjusting the blanket around her shoulders. She heard the soft pad of feet and glanced over her shoulder to see Sam, white hair mussed, eyes sleepy.
She felt a small zing in her belly at the sight of him, at the memory of what they’d done the night before. It had been…well, frankly, it’d been hot. And amazing.
Things were already complicated. And she hadn’t figured out exactly how the night before changed things, but it certainly had. She’d gotten up with the sunrise to think about that, but each time she pondered it, all she wanted to do was relive it all over again.
So yeah, no insight had been gained.
“Good morning,” he said, his gritty voice rolling over her nerve endings and causing them to tingle.
“Good morning.”
He took a seat beside her, and she offered him some blanket. He took it, scooting in next to her so that half went over his shoulder, and half went over hers. She took another sip of her coffee. She’d noticed he didn’t drink coffee either and thought about whether she should try to introduce it to him like she’d done with hot showers and decided that she didn’t want him to feel like she was trying to take control of every aspect of his life. If he wanted coffee, he could ask for some.
“There’s a heart on that squirrel’s fur,” he noted.
She followed his gaze to where a squirrel sat busily gnawing on a nut, one eye trained on them. It had darker markings near its hip, and Autumn could see that those markings were indeed in the shape of a heart. She watched the squirrel for a moment as it watched them. She glanced at Sam, taking in his now-familiar profile. She wondered how a man who had endured a lifetime of lessons in brutality would notice a heart on the side of a squirrel. She wondered at how a sensitivity like that hadn’t broken him.
“Once,” he said, still watching as the squirrel scampered up a pine tree and disappeared into its branches, “I went into a tiny bookshop in Bangalore.”
She watched him, curious and mesmerized, wondering where he was going and why he’d thought of it. She stayed still, as though to make a movement might snap him from his sleepy reverie. And because she sensed that he was allowing her a peek into the heart of him, she waited with bated breath for him to continue.
“It smelled like tea and old paper,” he said, drawing in a breath as though he could smell it still. “I sat in the back, and I looked at the pictures in this book about how to cut paper into art using a scalpel and removing so much of it that when you held it up, you could see right through it.” He nodded to the place where the squirrel was rustling the tree branches. “Squirrels…flowers, feathers, all sorts of things.”