Page 76 of Over the Edge

“You’re running away again,” I panted, sitting up so we were chest to chest, my arms wrapped around her back as she continued to move against me. “Even now.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, burying her face in my neck. “Please, just—shut up.”

I felt wetness against my skin—tears, not sweat—and something in my chest cracked open. I cradled the back of her head, gentling my touch even as our bodies continued their frantic rhythm.

“I’ve got you,” I murmured into her hair. “I’ve got you, Lyric.”

She came with a broken cry, her body shuddering around mine, walls pulsing and clenching.

My protective instincts, the ones that had sparked our fight, transformed into something more primal. I turned us again, pressing her into the mattress, my body covering hers. My mouth found the curve where her neck met her shoulder, and I bit down gently, marking her, claiming her in some ancient, instinctual way.

Mine, my brain chanted with each thrust.Mine, not Moreau’s, not anyone’s.

“Flynn,” she breathed, her head falling back as her nails dug into my shoulders and her legs trembled around my hips. “Oh, God. It’s too much.”

I kissed a path from her collarbone to her breast, relishing the way she arched into my touch. Her fierce independence was melting beneath me, her usual iron control surrendering to sensation. It was the greatest victory I’d ever won—Lyric Renard, coming undone in my arms.

CHAPTER24

FLYNN

“Look at me,”I commanded, my voice hoarse.

Her eyes fluttered open, locking onto mine, and the intimacy of that connection hit me harder than any physical sensation. In that moment, all her walls were down, all her defenses stripped away. I saw her—not Siren, not Elisa Deveraux, but Lyric—and she saw me.

I came with a force that stunned me, my release tearing through my body like a storm. Her name was a prayer on my lips as I poured myself into her, unable and unwilling to pull away. The intensity of it—of being inside her with nothing between us—left me shaken to my core.

We collapsed together, a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and ragged breaths. Slowly, reality reassembled itself. The distant sounds of the party filtered back in. The breeze from the partially open terrace doors cooled the sweat on our skin. I kept her close, my arms wrapped around her like I could protect her from everything—Moreau, the mission, her own demons—if I just held on tight enough.

Her head rested on my chest, her breathing gradually slowing to normal. I traced gentle patterns on her back, feeling the knobs of her spine, the delicate wings of her shoulder blades.

“I love you,” I whispered into her hair. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s true.”

Her body stiffened in my arms, muscles tensing as if preparing for flight. I tightened my hold slightly, not enough to trap her, just enough to let her know I wasn’t letting go easily this time.

“Why?” she finally asked, her voice so quiet I almost missed it. “Why would you love me?”

She sounded genuinely confused, as if the concept of being loved was fundamentally incomprehensible to her.

“What do you mean, why?” I pulled back enough to see her face, though she kept her eyes downcast. “Because you’re brave and fierce and brilliant and you fuck like a goddess.”

That got a small laugh out of her, as I’d intended.

I caught her chin in my hand and lifted until her eyes met mine. “And because you make me laugh even when everything’s going to hell. And because you watch jellyfish with such childish wonder and eat pistachio gelato when literally any other flavor would be better.”

A scowl drew her brows together. “Pistachio is the best.”

I smoothed the furrow in her forehead with my thumb. “And mainly because when you smile at me—really smile, not that cover identity bullshit—it feels like I’ve won the goddamn lottery.”

She looked away, her fingers fidgeting with the edge of the sheet. “I can’t... I’m not built for this, Flynn.”

“For what? Being loved?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle. “Why? What happened to make you believe that?”

For a long time, I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she sighed, and her expression cracked—a hairline fracture in her perfect armor.

“I had a sister,” she said, her voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “Elodie. She was three years younger.”

Had. Past tense.

---