Page 105 of Chaos

“I know what you are to me,” I breathe back, shaking with cold, my nipples pebbled up in the frigid air, shudders ofneed running through me. “You’re beautiful, Yorke, inside most of all. Like you were born beautiful and every step of the way as you went through life you kept making choices that made you stronger and harder and more powerful.”

There’s something wild about such a big man taking care to be so gentle, as he trails a hot path down my body, so slowly, too slowly, the opposite of the way we’ve been since I got back. Nothing hard or fast except my breathing, all the way down, between my legs to stroke his tongue from bottom to top in a way no sane person would do unless they wanted to.

“You taste so good,” he breathes, sliding a finger inside me. “So pretty. You’re going to take me so good.” He strokes me with his tongue again. “Think you can come for me?”

I arch backward, my head lolling across the bed. “Yes.”

“Then do it, my love. I want you to come all over my tongue.” He rolls the flat of his tongue along all my most sensitive parts, setting up a rhythm that leaves me squirming, my hips rocking me higher, and higher and … when it hits, it has me seeing stars as he gently slows his pace, letting me ride it out.

The darkness and the anger had its place.

But so does gentleness.

It feels right.

Like that part of me that got stuck in the cellar, just came up for air.

Humming appreciatively, his hands sculpt along my ass, fingers delving deep into the cleft there as he climbs up my body, and stops with his face right in mine, all humor and levity gone now, replaced by harsh solemnity, his hips coming to rest right between mine, he must have taken his pants off sometime between the orgasm and now, and he guides the blunt tip of himself inside me.

With a muffled curse, he drops his face into my neck, his arms snaking under me, pulling me close in a full-body hug. His fingers bite into my skin as his weight settles on top ofme, pressing me back into the sheets, warm skin, crinkly hair, hard muscles. Yorke, safe and bright, and … home.

I wrap myself around him like a clingy invasive vine. “I love you.”

He hitches one of my legs up with his elbow and looks down at where our bodies are joined. “Look at you taking me all the way. So fucking good.”

He keeps going after that, talking again, telling me over and over again that I’m good, and I’m beautiful, and I’m all his, all his, and I’ll always be his, and he’s never loved anyone else. And he tells me how proud he is of me, how hard I make him, how good I feel, how much he loves me, how he’d do anything to keep me safe. I say it all back while he thrusts inside me, rocking against me until my thighs shake and my toes curl, and his body coils tight, his hands in my hair, his mouth at my neck, pressing even deeper inside me.

And then talking must become too hard, so I press my face against his throat, his face buried in my hair, as our bodies take over, driving us higher, deeper, further.

More.

I’ve heard people say sex isn’t all that important.

I always wonder what they could possibly thinkisimportant if not sex. Joy? Pure joy, energy, release with another person who makes all the pain of life worth surviving. Procreation? The continuity of our species.

Certainly, it seems important to me.

I come first, plummeting over the never-ending waterfall, the bottomless sky, passing the words through the air, and I can practically feel that bond between us solidifying, all the universes colliding, every single one where we find each other no matter what. Where we choose each other over everything else. Every single time.

25|Monroetakes Cyrus’s hand

EPHIE

“READYfor your present?” Shane asks, as we watch Frankie pull Yorke out of the party room.

“Tss, please. You ready for yours?” Nerves ripple through me. I really hope I didn’t misunderstand what’s happening between us. He’s not using me for information.

Is he?

“You got me one?” he asks smugly.

“Youtoldme to.”

He grins. “I’ll go grab my bag. Be right back.”

He disappears in the crowd, looking oddly throw-back in his army uniform, like someone from a century or two ago.and I scarf down my last bite of chestnut chocolate pie, watching the blind woman.

It’s weird. She’sblind.And not like established blind or used-to-it blind. Like freshly blind. And usually, when I see her and she’s not with Frankie, she’s sulking. But right now, blind to the world, she’s dancing her heart out with the silver fox army guy.

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