38. Every Almost Leads to You #7
The pressure was sudden and exquisite. Charlie pressed down into it before she realized.
"Slip your leg between me, please," Reyna pleaded. Charlie lifted her own thigh up, guiding it between Reyna's so they were locked together.
Reyna pressed up while Charlie pressed down, and the rose sang between them, sensation crossing and re-crossing until Charlie couldn't have said whose pleasure was whose. But it was theirs, living in the narrow warmth where their bodies met.
"Rey." Charlie's voice came out broken.
"I know." Reyna's voice shook with a laugh that was mostly breath. "I know, Charlie. Come here—no—don't stop, just—"
Charlie's control began to slip.
Not all at once, slipping into something deeper and faster, into her hands moving over Reyna, palms sliding along her ribs, her waist, the plane of her stomach, as though she could map her and memorize her by touch alone.
Charlie's breathing had gone ragged from everywhere she touched, the rose gathered to meet her, and everywhere it gathered, she felt Reyna feel it.
The feedback made her greedy in the gentlest way for more skin, more of Reyna's small hungry sounds, more of the ache building low in both of them.
She kissed everywhere she could reach. A curve of her breast, the tremble of her stomach, the jut of her hip. She went to kiss the soft inside of an arm when Reyna reached for her.
Each kiss pulled another whimper from Reyna's throat.
"Charlie—Charlie, please come here."
Charlie lifted her head.
Reyna's eyes were wet-bright and gorgeous. "Please. Come back up to me. I need—" Her hand found Charlie's jaw, drawing her upward along the length of her body. "I need you to kiss me."
Charlie slid up the warm length of Reyna, and their mouths came together.
This kiss was nothing like the others. It was need with no restrictions. Reyna's lips parted for her, her tongue meeting Charlie's as a sound spilled out of her that Charlie swallowed and felt shudder through her. It was hungry and wanton, primal in a way Charlie had never experienced.
Reyna kissed her like she was starving and Charlie was all that was left in the universe. Charlie felt that hunger cross the bond and become her own until she was gasping into Reyna's mouth between kisses she couldn't bring herself to break.
As their kisses continued, Charlie slowly moved her hand down Reyna's body, over Reyna's stomach, past the dip of her navel.
Lower, slow, trying to give Reyna as many seconds as she could before Charlie lost her own sanity, until her fingers slid between Reyna's legs and found her, wet and warm, and Reyna cried out against her mouth.
"Charlie—"
The moment Charlie touched her, the rose surged down Reyna's body to meet Charlie's fingers, gathering exactly where she began to stroke, blooming beneath her touch like it was throbbing for her, like it needed her there.
Charlie felt Reyna's overwhelm crash through the bond and into her own core with an intensity that rocked Charlie unsteady, tearing a moan out of her she hadn't known was coming.
"You feel that?" Reyna gasped. Her forehead pressed to Charlie's, both of them trembling. "You feel what you're—"
"Yes." Charlie could barely speak. "I feel all of it, Rey. I feel you."
She stroked slow circles against Reyna and felt her shatter a little more with each one.
The rose raced beneath her fingers, meeting her, guiding her.
Everywhere Charlie touched, Reyna's pleasure answered until Charlie's own body throbbed with borrowed sensation.
Reyna's hips rocked up into her hand, her breath in ragged pieces.
She was clutching at Charlie's shoulders, her back, at anything she could hold.
"Charlie, I'm—it's so—" Reyna's whole body was trembling beneath her, climbing. "I've never—it's never felt—"
"I've got you," Charlie whispered, kissing Reyna's cheek, her jaw, and the corner of her open mouth.
"I've got you. Let me take care of you." Reyna moaned at her words, leaning her head back and exposing her throat to Charlie, who couldn't miss the opportunity to kiss her neck, letting her tongue slide up her throat.
And Reyna was so close. Charlie could feel it, a wave gathering itself to break—
Then Reyna's hand shot down and caught Charlie's wrist.
"Rey?" Charlie asked, a sense of worry coming through her voice.
Charlie's fingers stayed exactly where they were, pressed against Reyna. But Reyna held them still, her chest heaving, her eyes flying open to find Charlie's.
"Wait," Reyna breathed. "Wait... not like this."
Charlie searched her face, heart pounding. "What... what do you mean?"
"Let me touch you too." The words tumbled out of Reyna, half-plea, half-prayer, her thumb stroking desperately over the inside of Charlie's wrist. "At the same time."
"Rey..."
"I don't want to come without you, Charlie. I want—I want us to feel it together. Both of us. Please. Let me touch you."
Something in Charlie's chest cracked wide open.
"Yes," she said, fervent and immediate, the word almost out before Reyna had finished asking. "Yes... God. Together." She pressed her mouth to Reyna's. "I want to come with you."
Reyna made a sound against her lips that was almost a sob.
And then her hand slid down Charlie's body.
Charlie felt her breath leave entirely.
Reyna's fingers found her, and the moment they did, the rose bloomed across Charlie's skin the way it had bloomed across Reyna's.
It gathered to meet Reyna's touch, leading her exactly where Charlie needed her.
Charlie's forehead dropped onto Reyna's shoulder.
She'd felt the echo of it before, the ghost of Reyna's sensation, but this was everything.
This was Reyna touching her, real and direct.
The two things braided together until Charlie couldn't breathe.
"Oh my god," Charlie whispered. "Rey."
Reyna breathed against her ear, gentle and reverent.
They moved together.
Charlie's fingers on Reyna, Reyna's on Charlie, and the rose flowing between them in a single unbroken current.
Every stroke Charlie gave came back to her through Reyna's hand, every touch of Reyna's arrived doubled by the bond.
The two of them became a loop with no beginning, pleasure crossing and recrossing until neither of them could tell where one body ended.
Charlie had never felt so connected to anyone in her life.
It was more than touch or magic or sex. It was Reyna, wholly, within her and around her and beneath her hands all at once, the two of them meeting in that place neither had known existed.
"Rey..." Charlie couldn't finish. She was shaking.
"I've got you," Reyna whispered, leaning up to kiss Charlie gently, soft and patient as their bodies raged together.
The tenderness brought Charlie to a peak she didn't know was there. A love so profound it needed another plane of existence. She opened her eyes, only to find Reyna looking back at her.
"It's always been you," Charlie whispered.
"I know," Reyna breathed.
Charlie kissed her this time, returning the same soft, patient kiss.
They continued to move together, the current building between them into something enormous, something that lit the rose across both their bodies in a rush of racing light.
Charlie felt her own release gathering and Reyna's gathering alongside it.
Their breath tangled together, their hands moved against one another, and their hips rocked into each other in a rhythm that belonged to them both.
"Charlie..." Reyna's whole body drew tight beneath her. "Charlie, I'm going to..."
"I'm here." Charlie leaned forward, kissing her. Reyna pressed her lips to Charlie. "I'm with you. I'll always be with you."
And they broke. Together. In the same breath, at the same instant, pleasure crashing through them both and pouring across the bond while their orgasms entwined, moving through the two of them. The rose flared blinding-bright across their joined skin.
Then slowly, softly, the light dimmed between them.
The rose settled back into a soft glow beneath their skin before moving back fully into Reyna's markings.
Charlie's breath came in ragged pieces against Reyna's neck, and beneath her, Reyna trembled through the last of it, her arms wound so tightly around Charlie that there was no space left between them at all.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Reyna turned her head, pressed her lips to Charlie's temple, and whispered, completely certain, "I love you. I think I have always loved you. Even across the universe."
Charlie's throat tightened. She lifted her head and found Reyna's eyes, and something clicked on in her that had never made sense before.
The truth was, she wasn't sure people were built to fit each other this precisely.
That two lives could run alongside each other for so long and then, in a single night, turn out to have been the same line the whole time, seen from different angles.
Whatever the rose was, it hadn't made this, but it had made it visible.
Reyna wasn't someone Charlie had fallen for, not a feeling she'd stumbled into across all those careful months.
Reyna was the answer to a question Charlie hadn't known she'd been asking her whole life.
And Charlie, who had spent that whole life believing that anything true could be explained if you just looked closely enough, understood that she was never going to be able to explain this, and, for the first time, didn't want to.
"I'm not good at this part," she said. Her voice came out rough.
"You know that." Her voice cracked as she pushed through it, because she wasn't going to be careful, not now, not about this.
"I love you. I don't have a bigger word than that, and trust me, I've looked.
" Reyna laughed gently. "There isn't a bigger one.
There's just you, and me, and the fact that I would fall out of the sky into a bowl of cake batter a thousand more times if this is where I landed in every one of them. "