Page 73 of Jagged Line Paradise

He raises his hand to brush down the side of my cheek, his fingers working back over the spot to brush my hair from my face. Everything has slowed to the speed of his fingers tracing lines on my face.

How did he craft a momentlike this—taking us from urgent filth to gentle stillness?

How did he do that?

How does he make mefeel this way?

He takes in a deep breath and then kisses me. It’s warm, wet, full of passion, a gentle tasting that fills my senses to the point of bursting. I sigh into his mouth as he consumes me. The way his thick tongue sweeps across mine send tremors through my body. I’m honestly shaking from how good he makes me feel.

Was it this good thatnight ten years ago?

I lift my hips, encouraging him to move inside me, because I need to feel it. My bent knees close in around his hips and one of his hands reaches down, running a line from my hip to my knee to hold my leg there against him. I moan, sinking deeper into the soft mattress, feeling like I’m floating on a cloud.

This is heaven.

He pulls out in a long, even stroke, then pushes back inside me with a groan.

This is paradise.

Out, then in.

I’ve never felt such beauty in my bones. I feel the heat of the desert sun between my thighs as he moves—that clear, dry heat that warms my skin, lights my mind on fire, keeps the darkness at bay. His angle shifts upward and he moves faster, hitting me in just the right spot to send my body into a shaking frenzy of desperation.

“Andrés, please…”

His lips twitch, a satisfied smirk twisting the corner of his mouth and I can almost see the lip ring where it used to be, his expression so signature that it reminds me that the boy I knew is still in there somewhere. It makes my stomach clench.

My eyes fall shut as he strokes inside me, driving me up, up, up that cliff. My back arches off the bed as the building tension draws all my energy to my throbbing center.

He sighs, a sound of relief, of need, of satisfaction that he’s brought me right there to the edge. Everything inside me tightens, coils, twists achingly down low in my belly.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and though my eyes are closed, I can feel him watching me. “I can feel it…fuck, sunshine, come for me, let me feel it.”

Almost as if my body responds to his command, the dam bursts, and I come spectacularly undone.

Sofuckingspectacularly.

Colors burst behind my eyes and as he falls down on top of me, jerking his hips faster through my orgasm, my senses are filled with the vibrancy of my favorite desert sunset. I smell his perfect citrus scent mingling with the colors bursting through my climax. It’s the same banana, orange, and raspberry scents that match the colors of the sunset fading behind the distant mountain line.

Oh, wow…was it never the sunset I feltso brilliantly?

I thought it was the place, the bluff, the colors painted over the jagged lines of the mountains that made my jagged line paradise.

But it wasn’t the place it all—it never was.

It washim.

Andrés was my paradise and I let him leave. He wanted me to go with him and I stayed behind.

My orgasm falls and a sharp pain in my chest replaces it. Tears climb their way out from the depths of my soul, and I can’t help the sob that escapes at the very moment he spills inside me.

He groans, smiles, then looks down at me. “Sunshine. What’s wrong?”

“I love you. I’ve always loved you. I love you and it hurts.” The words burst from me before I can think about them, before I can censor myself, before I can talk myself out of saying them and let myself miss another opportunity to tell him the truth.

He sits up suddenly, though his cock stays inside me. He swipes his hand over his mouth, looking down at me with his forehead creased and his brows slanting toward his nose.

I cry.

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