Chapter 15 #4
“God, fuck—you’re so fucking perfect. That’s it…” His groan escapes rough through gritted teeth. “Fuck my fingers until you come, angel.” His voice breaks into a guttural sound. “I want to feel how tight and wet this cunt gets for me.”
“God…you have…no filter…” I gasp around a moan.
“None,” he growls, fisting his hand in my hair and tugging my head back.
“You want to hear my filthy thoughts of you, starling? The way I want to ruin you so goddamn thoroughly you forget every man who ever touched you. How I want to make you come so fucking hard, you only remember the way I wreck this sweet pussy. You belong to me. Only me.”
His filthy words awaken something darkly forbidden within me, each one a brand seared into my skin—a promise I desperately want. To forget.
“Oh, fuck…oh, god.” My hips buck, rolling with the thunderous waves breaking against the shore, fusing with the hunger churning darker in the ocean of his eyes. “Orion, god—more. Fuck, please don’t stop.”
And that’s all it takes.
“Ah—Jesus—fuck, Collins.” A coarse groan tears free of his chest as he bands his arm around my back, pinning me to him as he drives his fingers in relentless desire to make me fall apart, pushing me toward release with each punishing stroke.
His mouth coasts dangerously close to mine, swallowing my ragged cries. “God damn, I have never seen anything sexier in my fucking life than you,” he whispers over my mouth.
He brings me right to the precipice, easing me breathlessly toward the brink. My orgasm teases on the fringe, just out of reach, my body one frantic heartbeat away from shattering.
“I want you to come for me, angel,” Orion demands roughly. “Right now. Come on my fingers.”
Mist off the water rolls in with the tide, dusk draping us in a veil of seclusion that allows Orion to claim me with fervent words and purposeful thrusts, teasing me apart until I’m shaking, coming utterly undone in his hold.
The tighter he grips me, the more I crave the restraint, allowing me this effortless surrender. In the same way he held me immobile against the speaker, the dark unknown pressing in, safe within the cage of his arms. Taking away the war between fight and flight where everything was simply—
“Oh, my god.”
—feeling.
And he senses exactly what I need, his arm binding around my body. The plea falls from my mouth, breathless and unguarded, “Hold me tighter.”
His eyes capture mine, a fierce devotion there that clenches my heart, before his hold tightens, and every rhythmic stroke hits harder, my pulse speeding, the ache bruising deep beneath my ribs. But the pain feels alive.
His thumb drags rough leather against my clit, friction sparking with each pass, unspooling me apart like his music until that exquisite ache pulls low in my back, igniting my inner thighs and along the fusion of my pelvis where his thumb braces, rocking me harder as my body shamelessly moves into his touch.
His sinful strokes quicken, urging me toward my breaking point. An intense burst of pleasure unfurls and my climax shatters through me, the pleasure unbearable.
Orion groans in satisfaction as I clench tight around him, unrelenting as he continues to work me past the point of pleasure, until he’s claimed every pulsing aftershock.
Our heavy breaths fall mingled between us, charging our silence with crashing waves and staccato heartbeats.
Orion doesn’t move right away, keeping his fingers seated just inside me, as if trying to memorize the sensation of me through the leather, and a guarded expression moves across his face.
I lick my lips, and his gaze ravenously tracks the path of my tongue, a torn sound emanating from his throat before he pulls free, stealing a hitched breath from my lungs.
He pushes his fingertip past my parted lips, easing the slick leather over my tongue. Those flames of his eyes intensify as he swirls his finger, his agonized look of lust and hunger burning through me as I taste the heady mix of us together—desire and leather.
He makes a tortured sound, a low rumble that scrapes across my skin as his hand falls away. I catch a glimpse of the fading anguish in his gaze before he tightens his hold on my hips.
“God—fuck,” he groans, pulling me down hard as he grinds up against my center. “You feel so fucking perfect against me, it scares me how good. Just the goddamn perfect symmetry of us…that I could get so lost in you, starling.”
Orion pulls his jacket closed around me against the ocean wind and drops his forehead to my chest, his ragged breaths dropping heavy.
And my heart constricts painfully.
We stay like this, locked in embrace, waves breaking against the shore as the tide recedes farther out.
His fingers tap a rhythmic beat against the small of my back, a soothing cadence that resonates along my spine.
Wind lashes against our trembling bodies as adrenaline slowly ebbs, leaving me torn, words caught beneath the ache in my throat.
I swallow hard, unable to collect my thoughts enough to voice any. I don’t tell him the mess he’s left me. I don’t confess how utterly, irrevocably ruined he’s made me.
“Your heart is thundering,” he says suddenly. Then, as he pulls back, his gaze moves over my face, bright eyes glittering with satisfaction as though I need to say none of it.
His arms tighten around me, holding me close as he shifts backward. He throws his leg over the seat, effortlessly dropping to the ground, keeping me secure against him a staggered heartbeat longer, my legs still clinging to his hips, before he sets my booted feet on the sandy earth.
As I stare up at him, he gifts me with his captivating smile. “You have a little gold in your eyes,” he remarks.
I drop my head, blinking rapidly to avoid his gaze as the awe in his voice cracks a piece deep inside. “Why am I the only one you let get this close to you,” I ask, masking the tremor in my voice with a shiver.
Orion tips my face up to his, gloved fingers coming to rest alongside my neck. “Because you quiet the chaos in my head,” he confesses, raw vulnerability edged in his tone.
I focus my breathing, hoping he can’t feel my shallow pulse through his gloves.
The intensity of his gaze forces me to duck my head again, wishing for the barrier of his glasses—some shield between his eyes and mine.
I tuck my windblown hair behind my ear, only for the wind to send strands back across my face.
“Which, I might add—” a lighter note threads his timbre “—works exceptionally well when I draw those lovely sounds from your mouth.”
A tendril of heat curls through me as a wry smile pulls at my lips. With a disarming wink, he finally releases me and stalks toward the lapping water, leaving me with an ache burrowing beneath my ribs. I hug my arms around myself, pulling his jacket tighter for warmth.
With his back to me, Orion stares silently out over the ocean, watching the last shafts of sunlight sink below the darkening horizon.
Pelicans fly low, their black silhouettes dotting the sky above the rolling ocean. There’s a crunch beneath my boot and I glance down, bending to pick up a broken piece of spiral shell.
As I palm the jagged shard, I’m taken back to another night, another ocean.
Feeling another rising violence as a roaring tide crashed against the shore, stars glittering coldly above.
Desperation constricts my chest just as it did then, standing at the edge of a crime scene that would forever alter my life.
I sweep my thumb across my wrist.
One. Two. Three.
A few steps away, Orion brings his hands together and slowly removes the black leather glove from his left hand, and I drop the broken shell, forgotten, as the action draws me closer.
I’ve glimpsed his hands before, as he played piano, as he adjusted his telescope, but only from a safe distance—and I halt now, torn between my burning curiosity and the implication he might not realize what he’s doing.
Only I can’t tear my eyes away, tracing the intricate ink covering the back of his hand, the shaded lines and fine artwork. There’s a sparrow, or—
My breath snags in my chest as I recall his endearment.
Starling.
A flush of warmth spreads through me, my pulse quick as a pang reverberates through my chest.
I clear the ache from my throat, my gaze moving over star patterns and planets layered within the design, scrawled letters and glyphs I don’t recognize. Then my eyes catch on the fading bruise discoloring his knuckles—a remnant of his fist destroying the speaker.
Orion lowers to his haunches, the waves lapping the gray sand near the toes of his boots. Leisurely, he skims his bare fingertips over the surface of the receding water.
“You’ve never explained to me what it’s like for you,” I say, keeping myself at a distance.
He glances over his shoulder, the fading rays of light softening the contours of his face. If he’s letting me in another measure, I want to get even closer.
“What it’s like for me,” he echoes, seemingly understanding that I’m referring to his aversion.
He pulls in a breath. “It’s like, when you stare into a beam of sunlight and notice all the dust particles floating in the air, and for one brief moment, dread grips you.
Because suddenly, you realize this matter is everywhere, all around, all the time.
You breathe it. It fills your lungs, suffocates you.
” His gaze searches the misty horizon. “But then the light shifts, and you slip back into the shadow. Relieved, because you don’t have to exist in that constant awareness. ”
He rises, turning to face me, his gaze dark, haunted. “I never escape that moment.”
A sharp pain catches beneath my breastbone, a reminder of my own inescapable prison. My voice softens. “Living in that constant state of awareness must be exhausting.”