Chapter 15 Heath
Heath
The bed is king-sized, pillows battered and sheet a shambles, and beside me, Maya is burrowed into her own crescent-moon of covers, hair streaming over bare shoulders.
She sleeps with her face to the wall, as if warding off something.
I see a starburst of freckles at the nape of her neck, glinting in a bruise I don’t remember giving her.
My hand aches to touch, but I hold back.
The dream still claws at me, echoing cold and terror through the vascular system of my skull.
I prop myself up, elbows digging into the mattress, and try to slow my breathing to something less panicked.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the other Maya—the one from the snowbound log house—dying by inches.
She was so light in my arms when I carried her out behind the hut, trailing a shawl like a comet’s tail.
Her last words—“Only you, only ever you”—stick in my head like barbed wire.
I want to believe it’s just an echo, a little trip of the subconscious, but that would be a lie.
The ache runs deeper than that, a dread coiled at the base of my spine, something that feels…
ancient. It’s as if I’ve always known Maya, as if she’s been stitched into the muscle memory of every version of myself, every quantum possibility, every shoddy universe I’ve ever shuffled through.
I’ve done more drugs than I care to remember and know a hallucination when I taste one, but this is not that.
This is the crackle and snap of reality itself muttering: You know her. You always have.
I remember every minute of last night—our kiss in the rain and how desperation clawed at me to reach the hotel as soon as we could.
How I’d pressed her into the bed with a selfish, animal greed, the need to possess and comfort, to lose myself in the heat of her body and the trembling urgency of her hands.
In the aftermath, sated and limp, we’d talked for hours.
About travel, about parents, about childhood—her pale blue gaze never wavering, as if she were searching my face for proof of something.
I wanted to tell her I already loved her, beyond the limits of logic or language.
But how do you explain something that doesn’t make sense?
Now, in the icy hush, she stirs. Rolls toward me, the sheet slithering down to bare the soft curve of her hip. Her lashes flutter, and she blinks awake, mouth the barest O of surprise.
“What time is it?” she murmurs, voice burnt at the edges by exhaustion and sleep.
“Early. Still dark.” I shift closer, a hand cupped to her face, thumb smoothing a stray hair behind her ear.
She yawns, then narrows her eyes at me, as if in the tunnel of that gaze she could see straight into the core of my unrest. “Nightmare?” she says, gently.
“Mmm.” I nod. No point denying it. “I dreamed… I lost you. Again.”
She smiles, slow and hesitant. “I know those dreams.”
“Do you?” I ask, and my voice cracks like lake ice under a boot heel. “Sometimes I think I’ve lost you a thousand times already.”
She touches my chest, palm splayed over my racing heart. “We are not tragic Russians,” she teases, but her eyes are wet. “Maybe we could be boring, just for today. Just order room service and watch bad television.”
I lean in and kiss her, desperate, deep.
I taste the salt of tears neither of us has admitted to crying, and something breaks inside me—a dam, a lifetime of reserve.
Hands on her face, I pull her to me, harder, until she is wrapped tight to my chest, and my mouth latches to hers.
I want to memorize her, down to the metallic tang of her laughter, the silken edge of her tongue.
She shudders under my hands, and I feel her hips arch up, desperate for friction.
The sheet falls away, exposing her wholly to me.
I bend and take her nipple between my lips, feel it pebble instantly, and hear her gasp.
I drag my teeth over the soft mound, leaving a pink mark, and she tugs my hair, demanding more.
“You’re mine,” I say, voice savage. I kiss a bruise over her collarbone, delicate as a signature. “I’ll never—fuck—never let you go again.”
She pants, gasping, twisting her body into me. “Say it again.”
I pin her wrists to the mattress and slide my cock against her thigh, aching for her.
I want to rip her apart, devour every inch, but I force myself to move slowly, to savor the way she trembles under me.
I press inside, slow, inch by inch, feeling her open around me, tight and impossibly hot.
Her legs clamp around my waist, heels digging, every muscle straining to pull me deeper.
“You’re mine,” I groan, “and I’m yours. Forever.”
She arches against me, wild and desperate, her scream ripping through the room as her nails claw bloody furrows down my back.
I pound into her mercilessly, her tight heat gripping my cock like a vise.
Every thrust drives me deeper, conquering new territory as she writhes beneath me.
When she bites hard into my shoulder, I growl and slam her wrists above her head, pinning her completely to the mattress.
I fuck her with brutal precision, our sweat-slicked bodies crashing together, the headboard hammering against the wall like artillery fire.
I flip her over in one rough motion, yanking those perfect ass cheeks up to meet me.
Her spine arches beautifully as I mount her from behind, watching my thick shaft disappear into her dripping pussy.
Her tits bounce with each punishing thrust, and I reach around to pinch her nipples hard.
When I finally explode inside her, it's with a roar—pumping her full as she convulses around me, screaming my name, her juices running down both our thighs in a filthy testament to what I've done to her.
I collapse beside her, chest to her spine, arms looped around her waist in a death grip.
My cock still twitches inside her, our bodies joined in the aftermath.
I rest my lips against the shell of her ear, tasting the salt of her skin, breathing in the musky perfume of our sex.
My panic has abated, replaced by a bone-deep calm, as if all the ghosts of my bloodline have gone silent, satisfied by what we've just done.
We lay like that, tangled and sticky with sweat and cum, the room slowly lightening around us, the bloody sunrise creeping through rain streaks on the glass.
"You okay?" she whispers, her ass grinding back against me.
"Yeah." I trace the line of her rib with my thumb, then slide my hand up to cup her breast, still slick with my saliva. "Never better. Everything is better when you’re with me."
"I dreamed, too," she says, voice low and strange. "That you left me. I think you went to war and I waited and waited, but you never came home." She laughs, but there's a tremor in it. "I guess we're both a little haunted."
I draw her closer, and the need is sudden, acute—I have to be inside her again, to convince myself she’s real, that she isn’t a ghost who’ll vanish at dawn.
I push her hair aside and kiss the ruby mark on her neck, the scent of her sweat and sex already working some ancient chemistry on my brain.
She turns to face me, eyes wide and fearless.
“Again?” she says.
“Yes,” I rasp, and flip her onto her stomach, dragging her hips back until she’s bent near the edge of the bed. I kneel behind, marveling at the smallness of her waist, the dip of her spine, the generous curve of her ass. I slide in with one brutal thrust, and she shouts, wild, gripping the sheets.
I fuck her with a single-minded violence that scares me, dogged by the certainty that if I ever stop moving, ever let her out of my grasp, she’ll be gone—whisked away to some parallel world where she’s cold and dying and I’m lost and howling for her.
I dig my fingers into her hips to anchor her to me, mark her, claim her.
She comes again, shrieking, and I can’t last through that—her body rippling and shuddering, milking my cock.
I come instantly, so hard I see blackness crowd the edge of my vision.
After, we lie on the ruined bed in a heap, her hair tangled in my beard, her breath moist against my throat. I rub her shoulder in careful circles and feel the tremor finally leave her body.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
She kisses my chin, then my lips. “You’re an animal. But a good animal.”
We laugh, and the sound is oddly fragile.
I should tell her more about my dreams, the certainty I feel that we’ve loved before. But something—a primitive superstition—warns me not to spoil it, not to name it for fear it will vanish. Instead, I hold her tighter, as if the crush of my arms could save her from any wandering void.
“Stay with me,” I say. “Please. Even if I’m an asshole sometimes.”
She drowses against my chest, a smile curving her lips. “I’ll stay. But you have to feed me breakfast.”
I grin. “Fine. Fine.” I check the digital clock—0807. “We have an hour until the continental breakfast shuts down.” I sit up, stretching, and the soreness in my body is sweet. I pull on boxers, pad over, and pour her a glass of Evian from the minibar. Hand it to her.
She eyes me over the rim. “You’re more beautiful than any man has a right to be,” she says, then blushes furiously.
“Thank you,” I say, awkwardly. “You’re—fuck, there’s no word. You’re. a supernova.”
She giggles and sets the glass aside. “We’re ridiculous people.”
“We are,” I agree, climbing back into bed and pulling her atop me. “But I think we’re perfect for one another.”
She straddles me, the heavy fall of her hair curtaining my face, and studies me as if she’s reading a blueprint for a building she’s about to inhabit. Her expression goes serious, almost haunted.
“Do you ever get the feeling,” she starts, hesitant, “that we…?” She falters, unsure if she dares to voice it.
“Yes,” I say, and stroke a finger down her cheek. “Every minute since we met.”
She lets out a breath, relieved, as if I’ve unlocked some secret code between us.
Then she slides her hips down, enveloping my cock in a slow, deliberate roll, her pussy wet and tight and hot as lava.
She rises and falls, slow at first, eyes locked on mine, then faster, hungry.
I match her rhythm, hands on her hips, letting her drive the tempo.
She leans forward, forearms planted on my chest, eyes fixed and unblinking. Her hair is damp, mouth parted in concentration. She is beautiful—savage, poised on the brink of catastrophe—and I want nothing more than to let her destroy me all over again.
“Don’t let go,” she whispers.
“Never,” I promise.
We move together, friction and heat ratcheting up until my hands slip with sweat.
I lock one arm behind her back, anchoring us, the other in her hair, dragging her face to my lips.
We kiss, wild and messy, teeth clinking, tongues wrestling for purchase.
Her body tenses, thighs quivering, and she comes again, shuddering, her entire body clenching around me.
I follow, erupting into her, the world going spare and white for a moment.
We collapse, spent, her cheek pressed to my collarbone, breaths slowing in tandem. Outside, the rain’s stopped. Sun pours through the window, gilding her skin like honey on ivory.
“Hungry?” I ask, stroking the length of her back.
“Starved,” she says. “For more than food.”