11. Charlotte Gallagher
Charlotte Gallagher
Time drags. Neither of us says anything. Dane’s arms are still wrapped around me, my cheek resting against his chest as I listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
Whatever just tore through us has gone quiet now. Fragile, even. We said things we were never supposed to say.
And then he drew the line.
Nothing changes. We live with it.
He thinks this is over. But lying here like this, feeling him pressed against me, I know I can’t accept that. The idea of pretending this doesn’t exist, pretending I feel nothing when he looks at me, twists something deep in my chest.
“You’re so sure about what Ryan said, but we don’t actually know. He overheard a conversation. That’s all. He could’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe he only caught part of it.”
Dane doesn’t respond.
“Maybe Ryan misunderstood. He was only sixteen, Dane. Sixteen-year-old boys aren’t exactly known for careful listening.”
A quiet rumble moves through his chest, like a laugh he doesn’t quite let out.
“Maybe Mitchell is my father. But maybe he isn’t. We don’t know for sure. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting what I feel for you over something we’re not even certain about.”
His chest rises as he pulls in a deep breath, then slowly releases it.
I lift my hand toward the open doorway, gesturing out into the night beyond the shelter.
“Out there, there are rules. Expectations. People watching everything you do. But none of that exists here. No one’s watching or judging us.
No one’s here to tell us how we’re supposed to live.
This island is ours. We don’t live in their world anymore. ”
His hand comes to rest on my arm, moving slowly over my skin.
“Who’s going to tell us this is wrong?”
A beat passes.
“No one will know.”
His hand stills mid-stroke along my arm. “What?”
I lift my head and look up at him. “No one will know.”
For a moment, he just looks at me. He doesn’t answer, and the silence makes me push forward before I lose my nerve.
“We’ve been here for eight years. We could be stranded on this island for the rest of our lives. Are we supposed to pretend forever? Act like we don’t feel this? Spend every day fighting it?”
Even saying it out loud feels unbearable.
“That’s not living.”
I expect him to shut it down again, to draw that line and end this. But he doesn’t. He just stays quiet.
And the silence feels different. Not closed off this time. Not final.
Like maybe he’s thinking about it.
“This place has taken everything from us. We don’t have our family or our old lives. We don’t have friends, or anything that even looks like a normal future.”
Saying it makes the loss feel heavier somehow.
“No one our age should have to live like this.”
He’s still watching me, his expression unreadable.
“We already go without so much. I don’t think we should have to give up the one thing that might actually make us happy.”
He doesn’t argue with me. And that’s enough for me to keep going.
I reach for his hand and lace my fingers through his. He tightens his grip on mine right away.
“I’m in love with you, Dane. And you’re in love with me.”
I lift my hand to his face, fingers brushing along the rough edge of his facial hair. My thumb drifts to his lips, tracing the shape, and I feel the faint hitch in his breath.
“I want to kiss you until I can’t breathe. And I want to feel you. Not just this, not just holding hands.” I hesitate for a breath. “I want all of you.”
His body goes tight beneath my touch, every muscle drawn taut.
For a second, nothing happens. And then something in him snaps.
His mouth is on mine before I can draw a full breath. The force of it drives me back into the mat. He kisses me like a man who knows only one language—hunger. The kind that is deep, hard, and furious with want.
A startled sound slips out of me, and he swallows it with another kiss, one hand braced beside my head, the other locked around my waist.
I’ve imagined this so many times that I should already know what it feels like.
I don’t. Nothing in my imagination ever felt like this.
The heat of his mouth. The rough scrape of his beard against my skin. The way he breathes through his nose like he’s already losing control.
This kiss feels like the point of no return, the moment the last barrier gives way and burns behind us, leaving no path back to the people we were before it.
He pulls back just far enough to look at me, chest heaving. His eyes are dark and wrecked and feral with restraint finally giving way.
“Tell me everything you want from me, Charlotte, so there’s no confusion.”
His command sends a hot pulse straight through me.
I slide my leg over his hip and hook it around him, drawing him in until there’s no mistaking the press of his hard cock between my legs.
The contact pulls a sharp breath out of both of us.
I hold him there, keeping him close, letting him feel how perfectly his body fits against mine and how easily I could open for him.
“I want you to fuck me until I can’t think or breathe, until all I can feel is you.”
My voice shakes by the time I finish, but I hold his gaze.
“Until there’s no going back because we can never be the same again.”
Moonlight catches the tension in his jaw, the slow movement of his throat as he swallows. His breathing deepens, eyes searching my face.
His hand tightens at my waist, firm enough to pull a breath from me.
His gaze flicks to my mouth, then back to my eyes. Something shifts, and the last of his restraint cracks.
“Make me yours. Completely.”
He wanted clarity. That’s as clear as it gets.
A rough breath leaves him. “Fuck it.”
And then he’s on me.
His mouth crashes into mine, all that restraint finally snapping. I taste salt and heat and something raw underneath it. I meet him just as fiercely, my fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him closer.
His hand slides up, settling at my throat—not tight, just there, steady and possessive—holding me where he wants me as he kisses me like he’s done holding back.
My leg stays hooked around his hip, keeping him pressed against me. There’s barely anything between us now—just thin fabric—and when he rolls his hips, the hard length of him drags against the heat between my legs.
A gasp breaks out of me. He catches my lower lip between his teeth, first gentle, then sharper, enough to make my breath hitch.
Then everything shifts.
His hand finds the hem of my sleep shirt. He hooks his fingers into the fabric and yanks it up in one impatient motion, stripping it over my head and tossing it aside.
“Lift up,” he says.
I do, and he drags my undies down my legs, discarding them.
The shelter is dim, lit only by moonlight slipping through the gaps in the walls. He goes still, his attention fixed on me.
Something in the way he’s looking at me sends a nervous flutter through me. But I don’t cover myself. I let him see me.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
His hands slide over my stomach, moving higher until they cup the underside of my breasts. I arch into him, a broken sound slipping out of me.
He shifts his grip, lifting them slightly, watching my reaction. A faint, satisfied grin touches his expression when I gasp.
Then he lowers his mouth, closing his lips around one nipple, his tongue moving around it in a circular motion. His thumb teases the other, and then he switches, giving both the same attention without pause.
“Ohhh—”
He lifts his head just enough to look at me. “Tell me what you want me to do next.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks as the books flicker through my mind—the things I read and the way they made me feel.
The way I imagined it would feel if Dane did those things to me.
It seemed so well orchestrated in the books, but I don’t really know how to ask for it.
“I want you to kiss me… lower… between my legs… with your mouth and tongue. And maybe use your fingers somehow while you do it.”
He stills for a second, searching my face. Then his voice drops, rougher now. “Kiss you? Or eat your pussy and make you come?”
Holy shit.
The bluntness of his words sends another wave of heat through me straight to my groin.
“That’s exactly what I want.”
“Good. Because I’ve wanted to do that for a while now.”
I lie back onto the mat, my heart racing as he moves down my body. He presses slow, lingering kisses along my stomach, hips, and insides of my thighs. Each one sends a shiver through me, building a kind of anticipation that makes it hard to stay still.
I stare up at the ceiling, breath catching, trying to hold onto something steady as everything else slips.
He settles between my legs, his hands sliding around my thighs as he eases them apart. The closeness alone pulls a soft gasp from me.
I lift my head, looking down at the crown of his dark hair between my legs.
“Tell me what feels good. What you like, what you don’t.”
A breathless laugh slips out. “I’m pretty sure all of it will feel good.”
At least, it seems to in the books.
He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to the inside of my thigh. “Relax, Char. Breathe.”
He looks up at me, eyes dark and hungry. I watch, heart pounding in my chest, as he presses a kiss to the top of my slit. My breathing comes faster as his tongue parts me, licking up in one long, slow stroke.
I gasp, hips lifting off the mat. “Ohhh—”
He starts to lick up and down, his tongue hitting what I think must be my clit, before he moves lower. I don't know which feels better—his tongue flicking that sensitive spot at the top or the way it moves over my pussy opening, making it desperate to be filled and stretched by his cock.
His tongue moves in careful, deliberate strokes. I gasp again, my hands fisting in his hair, my hips lifting off the mat to meet his mouth.
He doesn’t rush learning what makes me react, what makes me gasp, what makes my hand tighten in his hair.
“That feels so good.”
He stops and glances up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, but don’t stop.”
He grins and licks his lips. “I want to try something else. Tell me if this feels good.”
He pushes the tip of his finger inside me and then advances it slowly. He pulls back and pushes it in again. And again.
“Do you like that?”
“Yes, but it would be even better if you were licking me while you do that.”
He doesn’t hesitate, his mouth going down on me again.
Every nerve in my body is awake, pulled tighter with each movement. The sensation builds steadily, coiling low in my stomach, making it harder to think and breathe.
“Harder,” I whisper, my fingers tightening in his hair. “Please, Dane. Give me more.”
He follows my lead, his movements growing stronger and more confident. The tension builds and builds and builds.
“Dane, something’s happening.”
The tension coils tighter and tighter until it’s almost unbearable, a pressure building so deep and insistent I can’t stay still. My hips move against his mouth without me meaning them to, chasing something I’ve never felt before.
“Oh God, Dane.”
A wave of sensation pulses where his mouth and fingers are working. My thighs clamp around his head, my back arching off the mat. My fingers twist in his hair, holding him there. If he stops now, I won’t survive it.
“Ooh… ohh—” The broken sound that comes out of me sounds like someone else.
A wave of pleasure follows before the first has even finished, his tongue moving through it relentlessly, his finger still rubbing that place inside me that makes everything go black.
My whole body shakes with it. I feel it everywhere—tingling in my fingertips, my face going warm, my hearing fading in and out like I’m slipping under.
He eases only when I go limp beneath him. My grip loosens in his hair, and my legs tremble on either side of his shoulders. He presses one last kiss against me—soft this time, almost careful.
And then he moves up my body. There’s something satisfied, and a little amazed, in his expression.
I look up at him, wrecked and completely undone. For the first time, I understand what I’ve been missing.
I let out a shaky breath, my cheeks still warm. “Was that okay for you? Doing that, I mean?”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “Are you kidding me? I loved every second.”
Something in his tone makes my pulse jump again, even through the haze.
I manage a small, breathless smile back at him. “Good. It’s my turn now.”