Harder, faster, more.
Our skin was slicked in sweat, heat rising.
Short wheezes ripped from her delicate throat. Chants of my name.
And there was no question.
This girl. She’d always fucking been mine.
And she was going off.
Bliss a crack in the room.
Thunder.
Pleasure bound and pummeled the walls.
She took me with her. The most powerful emotion raced down to gather at the base of my spine.
Physical and emotional and alive.
All her.
I felt it splinter out.
Detonating.
Energy bursting when I came, body pouring into hers. My cock jerked and spasmed within the tight clutch of her walls.
Her body so sweet.
So perfect.
Owning all of me.
Her teeth were in my shoulder, and her hands were in my hair.
Like she couldn’t get close enough to me. Like she wanted to sink inside. Share every part. Invade every recess.
She was already there.
I held her through it, the two of us riding wave after wave. I swallowed her whimpers while she swallowed my praise.
“I love you. Fuck, I love you. So much. There’s nothing better than this. Nothing.”
Shivers rolled.
Hers and mine.
Finally, I slumped down onto her in sated-out bliss. My heart still beating madly, and my spirit thrashing in the confines of my chest.
I rolled to the side, taking her with me. I brushed back the hair that was matted to the side of her face.
There was so much intensity ricocheting in the room that I was almost nervous as I tipped her face up to look at me.
It’d fucking gut me if I’d taken her to a place she wasn’t ready to go.
But then the girl . . . she smiled.
Smiled that smile.
The one I’d told her I was there to see.
One that was genuine and filled with joy.
Joy.
I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it. I wanted its existence more than anything I’d ever known.
I’d settled for a life of greed. Money and mindless sex and labels that meant absolutely nothing.
And there I was, holding the meaning of my life in my hands.
I brushed the pad of my thumb across her swollen lips. “Beauty.”
My light in the darkness. If she couldn’t chase it away, she’d promised she would at least be there to help me see through it.
She tapped her fingers across my heart.
“Beast.” She chewed at her bottom lip. “I’d always been afraid of you disappearing. Of you burnin’ out before I got the chance to keep you.”
“I never wanted to leave you.”
Our hushed voices were contained in the space between us, trapped by the four walls.
As if we could admit anything, and the wood and plaster and ghosts would hold all our secrets.
I stared at the lines and curves of her gorgeous face in the shadows, and I finally found the courage to ask her the one question I’d been both desperate and terrified to ask her all along. “You named her Bailey.”
Sadness streaked across her features.
I wanted to reach out, wipe it away, but I needed to know. It’d been gnawing at me like a bitch since the first time I’d heard her utter the name.
Her fingers were back on my face, eyes so intense as she searched for understanding. “I told you, sometimes dreams don’t die. Sometimes they don’t burn out even when the light is taken away.”
“I’d wanted it, Faith. To share that with you. I did.”
Bailey and Benton.
Bailey and Benton.
Bailey and Benton.
Old hopes spun around us, sucking me back to that time, like the girl was casting her hopes amongst the rose bushes.
“I’ll love her the same,” I murmured. Hard and soft. Lined with truth.
“How does you saying that break and heal my heart all at the same time?” she asked, a wisp of grief working its way into her words.
My grief.
Hers.
Ours.
“I promise, Faith. I will. I’ll love her like she was mine.”
“Is it wrong I wanted her to be? That the second I saw her, that name came out of my mouth before I could stop it? One look at her, and I was in love, Jace. The level of it was something I’d only felt one other time, and it was dropping free like a claim.”
Regret prowled beneath my flesh.
“If I could have stayed, I would have. I had to leave. I had to.”
“Because we broke into this house?” She searched for the answer in my eyes, her own horror there, like she could have been the one responsible. “That’s the reason you went to prison? Because we broke in here that night?”
“Partly,” I told her, unable to stomach the idea of actually telling her why. What I’d done. The effects that had spiraled through the years.
“Why didn’t you come back for me?” she whispered.
There was no missing the hurt that slashed across her face. So goddamned real I could feel it spear through the center of me.
“I tried. Sometimes we’re too late. Sometimes no matter what we intend, we fall short.”
“Oh, God, Jace.” Regret swam with the love in her eyes.