Page 141 of Fall Into Me

“Yours.” She finished for me instead. “I’m yours. I want you to show me what that means.”

I waited a beat longer, eyes assessing. Then I gave in, because I always would with her. Anything she wanted, for the rest of our lives—it was all hers.

My grip on her tightened, my hips moving fast, the wet sound of our bodies meeting. And when she asked for more, when she begged for more. I pulled out of her, and with gentle hands flipped her over, grabbing a pillow to place under her before settling her down. The gentleness ended with a tender kiss to the middle of her spine and I pushed back into her without hesitation. She let out a small, shocked whimper and a choked “Fuck,”scraped past my throat when I felt the way she clenched and shuddered around me. Her hands tried to find purchase in the sheets of our bed and came up empty.

“More,” she pleaded, and I reached down to where I was buried inside of her, coating my thumb in her arousal and bringing it back up to the tight ring of her ass. Slowly, I eased my thumb inside of her.

“Do you have any idea what you look like right now?” I panted, moving my thumb in and out of her ass while I continued to thrust. “So fucking full of me, baby. You’re taking it so well. So fucking well.”

“Fane!” Cali screamed my name along with a stream of unintelligible curse words, one hand holding her up while she reached back to grab onto me.

“God, I love you,” I pushed the words into her skin. Along the length of her spine. “I love you so fucking much.”

She pushed back into me, meeting every thrust I made, and when I felt her erupt around me, I let myself fall over that edge of oblivion, doing what I would always do: follow her wherever she went.

When we were showered, with fresh bedding and the house still too silent with Jerry’s absence, I held Cali in my arms while she absentmindedly traced the tattoos on my neck, my chest, and my arms.

“You came back.” She said it with a tone of disbelief, like she’d hoped, but she’d also prepared herself that I might not.

“Always,” I told her, and I meant it. Hoped she felt how deeply I meant it. I counted her breaths as they began to slow, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that pulled me toward sleep alongside her.

Just before it claimed me too, I asked her the question that had haunted me from the moment I woke to our empty apartment and found her gone.

“Do you think you could love me again?”

And in my dreams, I imagined her saying, “Yes.”

40

Calista

After

When I woke up, Fane was already in the kitchen.

The sounds of pots and pans were clanging, and the low hum of music filtering in under the door.

I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen. My eyes were still half closed, and I didn’t stop my little steps until my face was pressed into the soft cotton of the shirt stretching across his back.

The fabric was warm and smelled like him.

His hand came up to cover mine where they were pressed to his chest, and he turned to face me.

“Are you sniffing me?” His voice had that rumble of disuse it always had in the morning, making him seem all rumpled and cozy.

“I am.”

I pressed my face deeper into the fabric and felt his quiet laughter reverberate through his chest as his hand settled against the back of my head.

When I looked up, his lips now curved in a small, swollen smile, still tender from last night. It flickered as his gaze swept over my face—the bruising on my cheek, the bandage on my neck, and the marks beneath the shirt I’d pulled on. The ones he’d only seen in the soft glow of moonlight last night.

His hand came up, fingers light as they moved across my cheek. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

My heart sank at his words because this was almost exactly what I had been worried would happen. I shook my head. “This wasn’t your fault, Fane.”

“No.” He shook his head too. “It wasn’t. I’m still sorry I wasn’t there.”

I hadn’t expected that.

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