Chapter 59
Raine
We stay in bed for two days, only leaving to use the bathroom and eat whatever Soren puts in front of me. Mostly, we sleep. The deepest, heaviest sleep I’ve had in what feels like years. Soren needed it too, maybe even more than I did.
By the second night, the moon has risen high enough to pour pale silver stripes across the bed.
Soren’s arm slips around my waist and pulls me in tight.
I curl into his chest, the sheet low on his hips, my fingers tracing the ink that stains his skin.
I’ve always loved the intricacies of his tattoos.
There’s something deeply fucked up about how beautiful they are on him.
Demons, crucifixes, beasts. Darkness everywhere.
All dark symbols, except for—what is that?
Just above his heart, tucked beneath the demon nailed to the crucifix, is a small snowflake. The lines are slightly uneven, like it was done with a shaking hand.
I push up onto one elbow.
“What?” Soren murmurs.
“The snowflake.”
A lazy smile pulls at his mouth. “You like it?”
“You did that?”
He glances down at it. “Yeah.”
“For me?”
“For you.” His hand slides up my thigh. “One of many I have planned.”
I raise a brow. “Such as?”
“A jet ski.” His tongue runs along his bottom lip. “A lightning bolt. A knife.”
I huff out a laugh. Of course. Three things so wildly, specifically us. My fingertips trace over the snowflake again. They seem to have a mind of their own, as they fall lower, tracing the hard planes of his warm, toned stomach.
Before I continue exploring his glorious body, a light flashes over near the far wall. I glance toward it and notice a dark monitor sitting on the dresser opposite the bed. Another beside it. Small green lights blink in the dark.
“What’s that?”
Soren follows my gaze. “Perimeter feed.”
I turn to look at him. “Nice."
He nods once. “It's just a couple of cameras and motion sensors. Some thermal imaging.”
I sit up a little more, looking toward the screens. “Is this how you knew I was out there?”
He watches me carefully now. “Yeah.”
“You saw me coming?”
“I didn’t know it was you.” His voice lowers as he strokes the small of my back. “I saw a heat signature moving along the edge of the property. Sometimes a deer or a bear triggers it, but I knew it wasn’t an animal pretty quickly.”
I drag the sheet higher over my chest. “How does it all work?”
“This place doesn’t officially exist, we're completely off-grid out here. But there’s a generator out back, with everything on a separate line.”
“You’re prepared.”
He smiles. “Maybe a bit paranoid.”
“No. You're just protective about your peace."
"Our peace."
I smile at him, before returning to my half-sprawled position across his chest.
He tickles me down my spine. “You live here now, you know."
My heart thunders. “I'm home?”
"We're home."
I palm him in his sweatpants. Soren’s breath catches for a microsecond, before he pulls me into him. We're all fireworks and starburst now. His mouth opens beneath mine instantly, while his hands move over my back, my waist, my hips, like he’s feeling me for the first time all over again.
I need to feel him. I need the brutal, blessed proof of him inside me. My hand finds his cock and strokes him once, twice, and that’s all it takes. He’s hard instantly, thick and hot beneath my palm, his breath turning ragged as his eyes lock on mine.
I swing my leg over his hips.
His hands land on my thighs, stopping me just for a brief moment. His gaze searches my face like he’s looking for the slightest hesitation.
“We don’t have to do this, Raine.”
I thread my fingers through his and pin one of his hands above his head, holding him there. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
Something dark and unholy flashes across his face. Is it desire? Relief? I don’t know … But it has me aching for him.
I settle over him slowly, feeling the hard line of him pressing between my thighs.
I glide my pussy on his cock, and fuck me, if that doesn’t nearly kill me (again, in the very best way).
His mouth falls open slightly, and his eyes never leave mine.
God, he looks sexy spread out beneath me, his tattooed body glowing in the moonlight.
I position my hips over his and slowly angle his tip to my entrance. My hand slips between us, and I sink down slowly, taking him inch by inch, until the stretch of him steals the breath clean out of my lungs.
“God,” I whisper, because there are no other words to describe the way he fills me.
His eyes burn into mine. “Is this okay?”
“More than okay.”
“Good,” he says, almost like he’s talking to himself.
I brace my hands on his chest and start with a smooth roll of my hips, and a controlled rise and fall.
The bed creaks beneath us as I pick up the pace.
His head falls back into the pillow, throat working, jaw tight, and I swear the sight of him unraveling under me is enough to make me come all on its own.
His hands tighten on my hips, and he starts thrusting up into me, meeting my rhythm, making it deeper. Harder, less careful. The way I fucking love it.
My hair spills over my shoulders and down across my breasts, and his hands move everywhere, my waist, my ribs, my hips, my ass, like he can’t decide where he needs to hold me most. Like he needs all of me under his palms at once. Like after months apart, two hands aren't enough.
“Fuck,” he growls. “I’ve missed you.”
My body clenches around him at the sound of it. “Missed you too.”
But that doesn’t even begin to cover it. How much I’ve missed his mouth, missed his hands, the weight of him, the filth of him, the way he ruins me and worships me all at once.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, the words breathless.
I roll my hips harder in answer (thanks for the compliment, baby), and his head drops back against the pillow with a groan that shoots straight between my legs.
“Jesus Christ, Raine.”
I'm drunk on the sight of him losing control beneath me.
He grabs the back of my neck and drags me down to him. The kiss is filthy this time. Open-mouthed and desperate. Tongues and teeth and all the things. He thrusts up into me while he kisses me, hard enough to make me gasp into his mouth.
That’s it. How I like to be fucked.
My thighs burn, and my skin turns electric.
Every thrust of him hits deeper than the last, and I can feel the pressure building low in my body, tight and hot and vicious in the way it coils.
I break the kiss to breathe, and he takes the opportunity to mouth at my throat, my collarbone, the top of my breasts, like he’s starving and I am the only thing in the world that will feed and satisfy him.
Normally, we say we hate each other when we have sex. Tonight, I think I’ve found the courage to confess something different.
“I love you too, you know,” I whisper.
He looks up at me instantly, taken aback.
I say it again, louder this time, because I need him to hear it over the bed creaking, over our breathing, over the wet sounds of us having sex. “I love you, Soren.”
He grins. “I love you too, baby.”
And it’s those words, paired with the feel of his hard cock sliding in and out of me, that finally tip me over.
I come, hard enough that I feel it in my spine.
My back arches at the pleasure tearing through my body, I’m breathless and trembling, tightening around him while he holds me through every pulse of it.
“That’s it,” he groans. “Come for me.”
The filth of it sends another aftershock through me.
I’m shaking, barely able to stay upright, and he wraps one arm around my waist to keep me there while the other hand slides up into my hair.
Then he’s coming too, deep and rough and right where I need him, and all I can do is cling to him and take it.
For a few shattered seconds afterwards, there is nothing outside of us. There is no world full of hurt and pain. Of lies and deception. There is just his body under mine and my body wrapped around his. I collapse against him, chest to chest, both of us wrecked, alive and reborn.
And beyond the windows, beyond the dark lake and the trees and the watching night, I swear the whole forest stills for us.