Page 172 of Mud

Fuck, I wanted him with every fiber of my being. A voice in my ear whispered that someone could be watching us right now. That the whole world, all those people sitting around the playground of the Roe could be watching everything this very moment—and I still didn’t care. I still didn’t want to slow down or stop or even just take a second to make sure he’d wrapped us up in his magic.

No, nothing mattered except him.

“Put your hands on the wall over your head,” Taland said, and I let go of my boobs to do just that. “Push back when I thrust into you.”

Oh, fuck, yes, yes, YES!

“Ready for me, sweetness?”

My response was a loud cry that morphed into a moan. Then Taland removed his thumb from inside me and thrust his cock in all the way.

All my stars aligned—and I’m not even joking. It all fit so perfectly, every second of every moment of every day that led me here. He completed me when we were like this, and it was the only time in my life when I wasn’t half. When we were connected with our bodies and minds the way we were now, staring into each other’s eyes, frozen in the moment for as long as we needed, it all just made perfect sense.

And then Taland grinned. “Heels up.”

He tapped his shoulders. My legs moved on their own, and I rested my heels on his shoulders just like I used to. We fit perfectly like this, always had.

Taland grabbed my hip with one hand and my thigh with the other, and he began to move.

Before I lost myself in the oblivion that he brought me each time his cock hit the deepest parts of me, my eyes caught something as if by accident, something I had been too distracted to notice until now—his chest. The tattoos there had always mesmerized me—I was convinced that ink just looked different on him than it did on everybody else. It lookedalive,and he’d had six tattoos on him before, but this new piece that was on the center of his chest was new. I’d seen him get it on that footage at the IDD Headquarters, but I hadn’t seen what it was.

A tallarose.

For a moment, I was suspended in space and saw nothing but the lines that made every petal of the flower, and the stem full of thorns underneath, with the vinesextending to the sides like they meant to protect the flower.

I saw nothing butus.

Taland and Rose against the world, hidden underneath a blanket in the boys’ dormitory despite the severity of the punishment if we got caught, whispering to each other, lips pressed together, hearts beating as one.

“…but it’s a highly poisonous flower,” I told him when he first called us that—a tallarose.

“But the most beautiful flower of all,” he said. “It’s notitthat is poisonous, though. Only the vines and the thorns that protect it. Those are me.The flower is you.”

“Just because my name is Rosedoesn't mean I’m a flower,” I’d said, not entirely sure I wanted the two of us to be some deadly thing that even the most skilled alchemists tried to stay away from.

“It’s not because of your name, sweetness,” he’d told me. “It’s because you are the most beautiful girl in the world, and you are also deadly—because of me.”

I’d thought then that he was joking, and I’d even laughed before we’d kissed, but tonight had proven he wasn’t. Tonight, I knew that he’d meant every word.

And now we were here, connected again just like we used to be, and when he thrust himself so deep inside me, I felt him in my center, the memory of old times faded away into nothing again. His tattoo remained on his skin, but with each new movement he took me farther and farther away from the world and everything that made sense in it.

“I need you,” I whispered, arms shaking as I tried to push myself to meet every violent thrust of his hips. I needed him close to me, needed to feel his body on mine and he knew it.

Slowly, he grabbed my legs and brought them closer,kissed my feet and ankles like he’d yearned to do so for years, then spread them to the sides again, running his hands up to my thighs. The way he looked at every inch of my body would have had me blushing if I wasn’t so high on him right now.

Taland lay on top of me, one hand on my boob, the other underneath my head. My arms were numb when I wrapped them around his neck tightly. We were mouth to mouth and chest to chest, not kissing, not moving for a good moment, adjusting to the feeling of each other in this position.

When he started to move again, he did so slowly, lips parted and breath held, half hooded eyes never leaving mine.

He was perfect, always had been, and I suspected he always would be to me.

Sadness filled me from head to toe so suddenly for those three words I couldn’t say to him, for having to bite my tongue and fight off that voice in my head that insisted that I needed to,thatheneededto hear it, too. That it would be okay if I just said it out loud.

But, of course, I didn’t.

And Taland continued to move, to hold onto me, to moan that sexy sound that emptied my mind of everything else again within seconds. With every touch and every little kiss he showed me that I was the world—hisworld. No matter what had happened between us or what would happen after, in this moment we were us, and he breathed for me as I breathed for him.

It was poetic what we had, how we felt to one another. Pure and authentic and raw, even while I’d been lying through my teeth when we first met. It had been exactly like this every second of everyday.

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