Page 43 of Beyond Reason

“Xavier, I—” And like he knew he’d pushed me to my limits, he slapped my thigh with his hand. Once, twice, giving it a gentle squeeze. That was all I needed—permission, and his eyes burning like fire when they rolled up to look at me as orgasm swept over my body.

Heat blossomed from Xavier’s mouth on my cock and nearly blinded me as it spread along my skin. My back arched, and I had to wonder if it was him holding tight to my hips that kept me from completely flying apart as he swallowed around my pulsing shaft.

My throat ached, and it took me a second to realize I’d been whimpering his name, crying it out over and over until it felt burned into my soul, branded straight into the air and written across the stars.

But it was his hands snaking up along my sides in a sweet, soothing motion that finally brought me down. I was a shivering, sweaty mess… but Xavier pressing his lips to mine as he crawled up my body to feed me back the taste of my cum was somehow exactly what I needed.

I let myself drown in it, and I knew I’d happily sink and never long for the surface again.

This was the only place I wanted to be.

We lay for a while in the circle of each other’s arms, and I lost myself in the sensation of rubbing my face back and forth against Xavier’s shirt. The scent of him, of us, was intoxicating. Was it possible to get high just from this?

It felt so good to be here. It felt even better when he rolled me over while my eyes were still half closed and started trailing his fingers slowly up the back of my thigh, over the curve of my ass… but then he paused.

He was still for so long that I finally opened one eye and glanced over my shoulder.

His eyes were wide, and it only took me a second to realize why. I’d never wanted a tattoo—he’d invited me to go with him, and I’d always declined. There was no point in me putting myself through more torture than I’d already been through… and my father had certainly made sure I could withstand it if I was ever captured and tortured for information.

But I’d put up with the pain to get the ink on my back. It almost felt like penance at that point.

“Everything and nothing?” he murmured, trailing his fingers along the script. It ran across the length of my shoulders. Beneath it, a galaxy of stars swirled across my back, my spine. He’d only missed seeing it before because I’d been on my back when we were fucking around in the gym.

I could lie. I could tell him that I’d gotten it while drunk, gotten it on a whim. I could tell him that I’d gotten it for an ex-lover.

I didn’t have the strength to tell him what it really was, so I settled on a half truth.

“I got it after you died. I needed…” I swallowed hard, and the pain trying to build in the center of my chest almost overwhelmed the small tingles of pleasure still racing through my body, following the trail of his fingertips as they traced the words on my skin. “I needed something to make me feel close to you.”

It was almost the truth.

“I was never that far away though, you know? Just another lifetime.” He was trying to play it off, but his fingers flattened and his palm smoothed along my back, flipping me to my side so he could press against my chest. Over the feel of my thundering heart. “I’m here now, right?”

“I mourned you, Xavier.” My voice sounded as broken as I felt, and I brought my hand up to squeeze the necklace I refused to take off. “I never stopped mourning you.” I almost bit my tongue—almost, but I couldn’t help it. “I never stopped wanting you, never stopped loving you.”

For just a second, I saw something sweet blossom across his features, something soft that I’d barely glimpsed before, but he seemed so much more capable of now.

“You were the first thing I thought of when I woke up. You’re the only thing that’s left, the only reason I got out of that hospital to find myself.” I rolled onto my back, and he shifted, half spilling over my chest so he could look at me. “You’ve always been my heartbeat, Axel. You’re the only thing I’ve ever cared about, and maybe that’s why I came back, even though it should have been impossible. Because of you. For you.”

He had no idea how much it meant, hearing him say that. He had no idea how it felt to have his fingers trailing across the tattoo on my back when it was the only thing I’d had that made me feel close to him for so long.

He didn’t understand… and I had no idea if he ever would. I just knew I was done trying to pretend that I could resist him, that being with him wasn’t as necessary as oxygen, as natural as breathing.

I couldn’t do this without him. Which meant I had to do everything I could to keep him here, to keep him safe. To keep him mine.

Chapter 13

Xavier

The more I looked at the information on the flash drive, the more I wanted to throw the entire thing into the ocean and never think about it again. Half the damn files were encrypted, though I’d read enough to realize that the red splotches on my chest were more than likely evidence of how I’d died before. I forced my mind away from thinking about it—bullets and a knife wound.

That was one thing I’d decided I didn’t want to remember. Death. And either my mind knew the recollection would break me, or my injuries had buried the memory forever, because nothing rose to the surface.

Bullets and a knife wound—a blissful blank.

I dove back into the flash drive and tried to distract myself before my mind changed its… well... mind? It was frustrating—I could understand parts of it that I knew I shouldn’t have been able to comprehend. It was worse, because the more I looked at it, the more I realized that there was more than one experimental drug.

I’d been given the one that could bring a past life into the present, but they’d apparently been developing something that could undo those results. The details weren’t clear—it seemed like they’d done it for a very specific reason, as if something had gone wrong with the initial drug.

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