Page 55 of Shattered Echoes

It makes perfect, exquisite sense she is unmasked as the mysterious street artist who has captivated me from afar. Colette pours every ounce of her fractured soul into the brushstrokes adorning these crumbling spaces. With such passion, intensity, and dark undercurrents I've always sensed lurking beneath her surface.

It's all falling into place with deep clarity. Those haunting murals echoing both of our inner turmoils, the suffocating bleakness that still threatens to consume us at our most vulnerable moments. Each vibrant blast of her spray can be a visual manifestation of the despairing thoughts and violent memories we grapple with daily.

But despite the shadows lurking, Colette still shines through. Her radiance is a blazing beacon I find myself and drawn toward, like a moth careening into the heart of a flame.

The emotions cresting within me in these wonderful moments are so raw, so foreign from any fleeting lust or attachment I've known before, that they take my breath away. When Colette's mouth meets mine in a clash of lips and teeth and tangling tongues, it's as though everything inside me has been set alight at last.

God, what have I done to deserve this transcendent connection with another person?

I groan against her mouth, fingers tangling in the silken strands of Colette's hair as our bodies strain together with frantic desperation. My cock throbs, weeping at the searing friction of her damp heat sliding against the juncture of my thighs.

Even now, with our desires cresting toward an explosive peak, I can't shake the pang of loss that accompanies my euphoria. The dawning realization that someday, somehow, this beautiful joining will fracture and fade, no matter how intensely I hold on to this profound sense of belonging within Colette's fervent embrace.

"Stop thinking," she gasps, tugging sharply at my hair to angle my mouth over hers in a plundering kiss. "For once in your goddamn life, Antonio, just feel."

Feel. Yes, that's all I can seem to do whenever Colette is near. All thoughts and doubts and insecurities flee in the wake of her commanding presence.

Anchoring myself against her with a shuddering breath, I angle my hips to nudge the insistent ridge of my arousal against her slick, throbbing entrance. A broken whimper tears from Colette's throat at the first tantalizing brush of my cock through her saturated folds, her fingers convulsing against my scalp.

"Yes," she hisses, straining up to nip a path along the column of my neck. "Oh, God yes, please..."

The desperate edge of her pleas fractures what little remains of my restraint. With a guttural snarl, I loop an arm beneath Colette's thigh and hitch it higher against my hip, the motion burying my aching length inside her honeyed depths to the root.

We lose ourselves in dual rapture as her moans flutter around me in searing, rhythmic pulses. My forehead drops to Colette's shoulder as molten pleasure blazes along every overloaded nerve from that first, earth-shattering thrust.

For several suspended beats, there's nothing but the synchronous thunder of our hearts jack hammering in tandem, the building inferno raging between us, reducing every other distraction to smoldering embers. Colette is the first to recover enough to move, rolling her hips to pull a strangled groan from my lips.

"Christ!" I growl, lifting my head to drink in her expression of blissful rapture. "So, fucking perfect."

Her only response is a whimpered mewl as I withdraw almost fully, only to surge back into her with a punishing snap of my hips. Over and over, we set a blistering cadence, our skin slapping together in a filthy staccato that echoes through the abandoned mill.

The fever pitch of our passion pushes me toward the brink, leaving my lungs starved for air. Each plunge into Colette's hot, watery depths sends lightning bolts of pure, transcendent bliss lancing through my veins, her name a reverent litany on my lips with every broken exhalation.

Stars are already exploding at the edges of my vision as my orgasm crests over me with freight train force gathering speed and momentum until I'm splintered apart in the most rapturous way imaginable.

Colette clings to me like a lush vine as I shudder through the last few aftershocks, her own pleasure painted across her features in broad, ecstatic strokes. The splayed wings of color spanning the bricks behind her head only seem to enhance her ethereal beauty in these sated moments. Her goddess. Her muse. The solace quieting the riotous howling inside the fractured terrain of my mind.

As the haze of euphoria clears, every inhale tastes like freedom and rebirth and the sweet tang of paint on Colette's damp skin. My hand finds purchase against the wall, tendons straining with the effort to steady us both as my knees go watery with satiation.

"Holy fuck," I grate against the delicate shell of Colette's ear, nuzzling my nose into the fragrant tangle of her hair.

A throaty chuckle rumbles through her petite frame, where it's draped weightless across my own. Even spent, she exudes that intoxicating sensuality that leaves me addicted and starved.

"We definitely need to get more adventurous with our lovemaking," she purrs, trailing a teasing line of nips over my jawline. "Seems your creativity responds well to a little…spontaneity."

I tip my head to capture her lips in a slow, searching kiss, savoring the heady slide of her tongue and the delicious little noises she exhales against my mouth.

"Careful, beautiful," I tease when I finally draw back far enough to grin at her. "Your crazy is showing."

Colette arches an imperious brow while reaching up to card her fingers through my disheveled hair. "You have seen nothing yet, rockstar."

For several suspended moments, all that exists within the crumbling confines of the old mill is the steady thrumming of my pulse and the whisper of Colette's soft exhales fanning over my fevered skin.

I stay buried deep inside her welcoming heat, cradling her slender form flush against the damp brick as my mind drifts in a thick, blissful haze.

Coherent thought filters back in fits and starts–a jumbled torrent of fractured images and ethereal flashes of sensation.

The feral glide of our sweat-slicked bodies straining together. Colette's rapturous cries echoing through the cavernous space, mixing with the thundering cadence of blood roaring in my ears. And beneath it all, a profound undercurrent of emotion so powerful, it nearly steals what little breath remains in my lungs.

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