The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

But Luc had handed over the reins to me. He’d done so the moment he’d climbed into the tub, letting me guide where his hands, his lips went. He’d given up all control in this.

I broke the kiss, his chest rising and falling heavily against mine. “We can stop,” I whispered as I let my forehead rest against his. “We can do anything you want.”

One of Luc’s hands swept up my back to curl around the nape of my neck. “I want exactly what you want.”

I shivered as I slid a hand down his damp chest and then lower, under the water. His back arched, and the way he said my name as my hand touched him kissed my skin. I lifted up just enough, and then there was just him and me and the strangled sound he made against my lips.

Neither of us moved for several long, stuttered heartbeats. There was a pinch of pain that was more of a discomfort as I adjusted to the feeling. Luc was just as still, his body hardened with tension.

Drawing in a shallow breath, I tipped my body forward, kissing him. Both of his hands tightened, one tangling in my hair at the back of my neck, the other digging into my flesh.

“Evie. God,” he breathed, shuddering when I moved tentatively. “I…”

My hands were back on his shoulders. “Is this okay?”

“It’s more than okay.” His lips touched mine. “It’s perfect. It’s just that I thought about how this would feel. Hell, I probably thought about it too much.” He pulled me against him more tightly, wringing a gasp from me and a groan from himself. “But I never knew it could feel like this. I had no damn idea, Evie. None.”

“Me, either,” I said, and that was the truth.

Our mouths came together, and I began to move once more, slowly as I tried to soak in how he felt against me, in me, and how every inch of my skin became hypersensitive. My heart was thundering in my chest, completely lost and unprepared for the heady wave of sensations that seemed to sweep through me, through us.

Then, in the center of the keen madness, a bolt of fear pierced me. What if I did forget again? There was still a chance. There’d always be a chance. What if I had no memory of the beauty of these moments, the bliss of this? I could—

“I love you, Evie.” One of his arms was curled around my waist, holding me so tightly to his chest as his hips chased the rhythm of mine. “You won’t ever forget that. You won’t ever forget this. Neither will I. It’s impossible.”

My fingers dug into his shoulders and then tugged at his hair. “Impossible,” I repeated, opening my eyes to lock with the raw stare of his.

Eyes locked, there was no sense of rhythm at that point, no thought of the water swelling and falling, only to rise again, spilling over the rim. There was a rattling and then a creaking of the slowly swaying bathroom door. Soft white light flickered along his shoulders, and I looked down us, beyond his chest and mine, to where a constellation of dark dots appeared along my stomach, moving and twisting with my body—with our bodies.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, his hand finding the spots and following them over the curve of my hip. “You’re so beautiful.”

I felt like that in the moment. How could I not? And there was no room for words. There was just us, and how we felt for each other, and that became a potent force, electrifying the space until I could hear the crackling of the air around us charging with the Source, lighting up the very air we breathed, as if the bathroom were suddenly full of a thousand fireflies, a stunning display of just how powerful our love for each other was.19“It’s weird,” Luc was saying sometime later. We were lying in bed, neither of us speaking while he played with my hair and I used his chest as a pillow. I’d been lying there trying to determine if my vision was better than before I slept, because I couldn’t remember being able to see the room so clearly, or if it were my imagination. “Sex is weird,” he added. “I mean that in a good way, but it’s like my brain is having a hard time processing it. Like it doesn’t change anything, but it changes everything. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does make sense.” I smiled, because I’d been wondering if Luc had noticed how being in each other’s arms felt more intimate now or if it just felt that way to me. “When I did it before, it was sort of … really awkward afterward. Like it was over and we both were like … okay. That’s it? Or at least that was how it felt for me. It was done, and I think he said something nice, and then rolled over and started messing around on his phone.”