Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

One last memory to take with me into the dark.

“I need you,” I whispered into his mouth. “Please, give me this. One last time.”

“Lila, no,” he insisted, but there was panic in his eyes, and his hands still clutched me close. “Don’t.”

“If you care about me at all,” I almost cried, “you’ll give me this one last time.”

He looked down into his lap, hair shifting over his forehead, shoulders rounding.

It wasn’t fair, what I was asking, maybe, but I wouldn’t let go without a fight.

And when he looked back up at me, his heart was in his eyes, and I knew I’d won the battle even if I lost the war.

He collected me up in his arms like an abundance of flowers, gently, reverently, nose to my hair to breath deep as he walked us back down the hall to his bunk room and laid me down.

We took our time, softly peeling back clothes, tracing valleys with fingers, kissing peaks with open mouths and wet, lashing tongues. He worshipped me, his hands on my body as reverent as a servant tending his vassal.

We didn’t speak, we didn’t even moan.

We were all heavy, feathering breaths and the slide of slick skin against skin.

When he notched himself at my entrance, he locked eyes with me, hands with me, legs with me and pushed through to the hilt. I watched the way desire played out in his eyes and squeezed mine shut to sear the image into my memory.

And when I came, a climax that washed through me like warm water as he made love to me, I cried.

He kissed the tears off my cheeks, licked them from the corner of my mouth, and sighed into my mouth as he released inside me.

Wrecked, ruined by his body and his love even if he refused to call it that, I fell almost immediately into the arms of sleep, exhausted by the day and by him.

“I hope you dream of me,” his voice whispered as he held me close, still inside me and all around me, tight like he couldn’t bring himself to let go. “I hope you never stop.”

NOVA

Lila lay beside me, lost to the world in an exhausted slumber, dreams racin’ behind her lids in a way that told me her fears had followed her into sleep. I felt her perfection move through me like a religious experience, the way a zealot might feel after a long, hard pilgrimage lookin’ on his final destination, his place of peace and worship.

And I hesitated.

I hesitated ’cause I was willingly cuttin’ out the best part of my life and what felt like the best part of myself by endin’ this thing with her.

I wanted it, her beside me in bed every mornin’, the scent of flowers in my nose as I buried my face in all that hair. But I couldn’t shake the feelin’ that I’d been doin’ her some grave wrong. That bein’ shackled to me would only bring her down, anchor her in a way she’d never get full light.

She wanted me, she fuckin’ loved me, and I could see it shinin’ in her eyes whenever she looked at me. I wondered how long she’d been lookin’ that way, how long I’d been blind to her ’cause of her age and our circumstances.

Pain ripped through me.

’Cause I realized I’d been plantin’ flowers across her skin and a garden in her heart for years, and I’d never known how badly that must’ve hurt her until I realized that same garden, planted by her hand, existed in me.

I loved her.

Not the warm, gentle affection of a man for a little girl, not even the solid, intricately woven rope of affection tyin’ a brother to a sister.

I loved her in all the complicated ways a flower thrives in a garden. I loved the way she tended to me like I was somethin’ precious and not monstrous. I loved the way she wore blooms in her hair and inked into her skin ’cause she spoke the language of flowers better than the language of men, and she’d always been so in sync with her surroundin’s. I loved the way she turned her face up to me as if seekin’ sunlight, needin’ the warmth of my praise and presence to grow and thrive.

It was a heady fuckin’ thing, bein’ someone’s sunshine, their rain, their entire ecosystem.

But it was dangerous too.

’Cause I would raze that all to the ground with one wrong move, one of my stupid mistakes.

And it would be gone, laid to waste forever.

This was better, rippin’ out the weeds of romanticism I’d been so stupid to sow in her heart. The other stuff, with time, would survive.

We’d always be family, and eventually, we’d get back to our friendship.

Two years hadn’t ruined us, what was a few more in an effort to heal her heart and give her the chance to win someone better?