Evie #2
Then his hands are everywhere, tracing my waist, my back, and my thighs. Each touch is awed and starving at the same time, like he’s spent years learning how to take a person apart and is just discovering what it feels like to want to put someone back together.
I want to be the one he puts back together, and the thought’s so big and terrifying that I kiss him harder to keep it from swallowing me whole.
Not breaking the kiss, he walks us to shallower water.
His steps are careful and unhurried, like he’s afraid that if he moves too fast, he’ll wake up and I’ll be gone.
My fingers trace the back of his neck, and his grip on my thighs tightens in response, a reflexive squeeze that sends heat pooling low in my stomach.
My back meets the soft moss growing at the water’s edge, as if it was made for this moment, and then he’s settling over me, the weight of him grounding and real.
I feel every inch where we’re pressed together—his chest against mine, his hips between my thighs, and the hard planes of his stomach tensing against my skin every time he breathes.
But instead of pressing forward, he brushes wet hair from my face with fingers so gentle I barely feel them, looking at me like I’m the first good thing he’s let himself want in years.
My head spins. Because the man who kills without regret and sleeps with blades within arm’s reach is looking at me like I’m made of glass, and I don’t know what to do with a tenderness this big coming from hands this dangerous.
“You’re shaking,” I whisper, gazing up at him as if the moonlight can pull truths straight from his soul.
“I’m terrified.” He says it like a confession, his mouth barely an inch from mine. “Steel doesn’t lie, and neither do I. The way I feel about you terrifies me more than anything I’ve ever fought.”
“And what do you feel?” I ask, not wanting to push him, but also not sure when we’ll have a moment like this again.
“I feel like I’ve been at war with myself for years, and you’re the first thing that’s made me want peace.”
He holds my gaze, steady and unflinching, as if he’s handing me the most unguarded part of himself and trusting me not to cut him with it.
The words take my breath away, so I just reach up and trace the line of his jaw, and he turns his face into my palm, pressing his lips against its center. The gesture’s so quiet and unlike him that my chest aches with the weight of it.
Kieran Cross, combat instructor at Blaze Academy with seventy-three kills inked on his skin, currently positioned between my thighs in a way that suggests he intends for me to become number seventy-four, except the death will be metaphorical and involve significantly more pleasure.
I arch into him, and he groans against my throat, like I broke through his last line of his defense.
His hips press forward, and I feel him at my entrance, separated by two thin layers of soaked fabric.
The length of him pressed against me makes my breath hitch, and my hips roll to his before I can stop them.
The pressure’s maddening, and not nearly enough.
“More,” I breathe, and then he rocks against me, slow and deliberate, and I cry out at the friction.
He does it again, harder this time, his hand sliding up to grip the back of my thigh and hitch it higher on his hip, changing the angle until the next roll of his hips drags him right against my center and my vision whites out.
“Are you sure?” He searches my face, the vulnerability in his eyes looking foreign on him.
“Yes,” I say, not breaking his gaze. “I’m sure.”
Then his hand’s sliding between us, his fingers finding where I’m swollen and aching even through the fabric.
He presses down, rubbing in slow circles, and my back arches off the moss, my hips chasing his fingers as the pressure builds until I can’t do anything except grip his shoulders and hold on.
The sensation sends me spiraling until I shatter from his touch, my body clenching as I cry out against his shoulder.
His groan vibrates against my throat, and then he’s pulling fabric down, freeing himself, and positioning himself so the blunt heat of him nudges my entrance, making every muscle in my body tighten with want.
He’s hot against me, and the first brush of bare skin on bare skin tears a sound from both of us that echoes off the water.
He freezes there, shaking, his breath is coming in short, sharp bursts.
His eyes squeeze shut, and he rests his forehead on mine, every part of him pressed against me for one endless moment.
Everywhere our bodies touch, his heart’s pounding so hard it might be mine, and the restraint he’s holding onto is visible in every locked muscle and tense fist planted in the moss beside my head.
I want this. Not just physically, but in the deep, marrow-level way that has nothing to do with friction or heat and everything to do with the fact that this man held me while I cried about my brother, called my stubbornness strength, and chose to stay when every instinct told him to run.
Now, he’s one push from being inside me, and my thighs tighten around him, my body straining toward his.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, my fingers in his hair. “I’m not going to break.”
“No,” he says, and it’s barely a whisper. “But I might.”
I kiss him, slow and sure, trying to say with my mouth what I can’t in words. It’s unhurried and tender, as if we have all the time in the world and can spend it wrapped around each other in this place forever.
Slowly, his hips shift forward, the pressure at my entrance increasing as the tip of him pushes through, and we both stop breathing. For three heartbeats, neither of us moves. He’s barely inside me, and it’s already too much and not enough and everything all at once.
My hips lift, just barely, taking him a fraction deeper. The feeling of him, even this much of him, is so intense that my nails dig into his back and my entire body clenches, aching for the rest. I tilt my head to give him more, because this is happening, and I want every second of it.
He chokes on a breath, his arms giving out until his full weight pins me to the moss, his body shaking against mine. The moment stretches, and stretches, and I think I might spontaneously combust from it before I can finally find out what it feels like when Kieran Cross lets go.
“I can’t,” he says, and then he’s pulling out of me, like separating from me takes everything he has.
A sharp breath escapes me, and my body arches up to his, chasing what it lost. But he just sits up and puts six inches of cold air between us, refusing to look at me, as if one glance at my face would undo whatever decision he just forced himself to make.
I blink, my thoughts racing, unable to process what just happened.
“Why?” I scan his face, searching for answers I’m not sure he’ll give.
He stares at the water for so long I think he’s not going to answer. Then he exhales, slow and shaky, like a man stepping off a ledge.
“Because violence follows me everywhere I go.” His eyes meet mine again in the moonlight, and they’re cracked open in a way I wasn’t expecting. “Everyone I care about dies. If I let myself have you, I’ll want to keep you, and that’s a death sentence for both of us.”
The words should hurt. They do hurt, somewhere beneath the golden haze that’s wrapped around my thoughts.
But his words keep playing in my mind, and I can’t let them go.
If I let myself have you, I’ll want to keep you.
That’s future conditional. It’s not I don’t want you. It’s not this was a mistake. He’s saying he already wants me, and the only thing stopping him is the certainty that wanting leads to having, and that having leads to losing.
Kieran Cross isn’t rejecting me. He’s rejecting the future where he lets himself be happy. And even now while he’s pulling away, his hand stays resting on my knee, his thumb moving in those slow circles, as if his body refuses to get the message his mouth is sending.
But I’m too emotionally drained to do anything except lie here on the mossy bank and watch him build walls I don’t have the energy to tear down.
“We should rest,” he says, gentler now. “You’re exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve barely slept since we left the academy.” He lies down beside me, not touching, but close enough that I can feel his warmth. “Close your eyes. I’ll keep watch.”
“I don’t need—”
“Evie.” One corner of his mouth lifts into a smile. Barely, but it’s there. “For once in your life, stop arguing and just relax.”
I want to protest, but his hand finds mine and threads our fingers together, and anything I might have said gets stuck in my throat.
Without my scanning, I can’t measure his pulse through his fingertips. But I can feel it, fast and unsteady, and it tells me everything the words he said didn’t.
“Rest,” he repeats. “We’ll figure everything else out tomorrow.”
I close my eyes, and the golden haze wraps tighter, pulling me down into softness and safety. The last thing I feel is Kieran’s lips against my forehead and his voice far away, murmuring words I can’t make out.
Then there’s only warmth, peace, and the distant sound of water as I curl into him and sink into sleep like I’m finally coming home.