CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
SYLVIE
The choppy thwack of helicopter blades grows deafening, and my stomach knots with a cocktail of trepidation, hope, and weariness.
Jax has his pistol aimed and ready as he peers out the window, but when his lips twitch ever so slightly, I brace myself for a welcome battle.
The kind waged when both anger and consolation prevail with the vehemence of a tsunami.
So, when the door between the cars opens and the swindler who stole my heart one flirty, unhinged encounter at a time swaggers in, like he’s simply late for a party, I become the tsunami, slamming into him with the weight of my entire being behind it.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
His mammoth frame doesn’t budge. In fact, those long limbs capture me so that I’m curled around him, locked in his embrace.
He palms my head and breathes me in, his scruff scraping my cheek. “Go ahead. Let me have it, baby girl.”
“Don’t you do that.” The words are barely intelligible, a choked sob. “Don’t sweet-talk me.” I smack his shoulder. “You threw me off a cliff.”
He flashes that dazzling smile that is all fireworks, windfalls, and warnings.
Hypnotic trouble with a dimple that mocks me.
“We should tweak the way you tell that story, or it’s going to be terrible for my image.
” Speaking of his image, his hair is perfectly mussed, as always, but as I take a deeper look, the shadows on his face are haunting, even as he teases, “An epic swing-dance move, leading to masterful cliff diving, sounds better. Heroic even, when you add that we were running for our lives.”
Jax muffles a laugh behind us, but he’s been through enough, so I don’t bother glaring.
“How can you think this is funny? I thought you might be dead. I went into that ocean, not caring if I—”
“Shh,” he cuts me off, squeezing me tighter. “We’ve got the rest of our lives for you to punish me, Sly. Just let me hold you for a minute.”
There is something tenderly grave about that request, so I relent, melting into him.
My tears soak into his button-up, my arms clinging to his shoulders.
He smells like fresh-cut grass, saltwater taffy, and whiskey, and yet still him.
Still citrus and suede. Haughty seduction with a vulnerability that frightens me.
I straighten my spine and give him a once-over. Beautiful as ever, but his coloring is slightly off.
Since I’m barely hanging on, my observation comes across accusatory. “You’re hurt.”
He shifts his gaze to Jax before he bites my lip with a demand. “Later. I’ll tell you everything later.”
As his lips descend upon mine, the whirring of the door opening and closing resounds behind us. And then it’s tongue and teeth and nips and swallows. Roaming hands and restless hips. Panting breaths and heart-pounding pleas.
“I love you more than life, baby. I need you,” he rasps, and his own foray with torment smacks into me.
He made a choice and feared the outcome, like I’ve done a hundred times. But this was life-or-death stakes, split-second judgment calls, and a devastating layover.
The kind of panic that lingers.
And probably the best chance we had. But whether I admit that or not, I want to be his strong tower, his mooring in the storm, his blanket to smother the flames. Not floating at sea while he fights the battle.
“I’m here. I’m yours. I love you back with everything I am,” I whisper, raking my nails through his hair and down to his nape, drawing him closer.
On a shuddered breath, he fists my matted strands, and it occurs to me that I must look like a drowned rat.
I can’t tarry there because he wrenches my head back, his mouth blazing a scorching hot trail from my throat to my collarbone to the swell of my cleavage.
In his perusal, we get turned around, or his balance falters from the sway of the railcar.
Either way, he flattens me against the window, thrusting against me before he rips my jumpsuit down, the fabric splitting to expose my breasts since I was braless.
This is the rush that comes when the raid is fruitful and the heist is in the bag. When the bullets were aimless and the loot is yours for the taking.
Victors and winnings and a feverish triumph.
“There was a zipper,” I admonish, though I don’t really care.
“Too long,” he pants as he steadies me against the window and peels my clothing clean off with a growl of approval. Panties too.
The heat of the sun pouring in contrasts with the cool glass at my backside, incongruent sensations that accompany the train’s rocking and rattling and Cash’s feral reckoning.
Following his lead, I tear open his shirt in savage fashion, buttons diving for refuge to the melody of his grunts.
He assaults my mouth again, devouring my soul swipe after swipe.
It’s rough and satin and so possessive that my stomach swoops.
Maybe he’s trying to etch himself onto my tonsils or bones or soul.
Doesn’t he know he’s already there? In my blood and veins, heart and cells. No me without him.
Destiny and providence.
Wholeness pillaged via a suave golden emperor.
The train judders and quakes, my hips flying forward and pressing my pussy into his hard length, which only inflames us. I unbuckle his belt, shred him of his pants, and unsheathe his leaking cock.
“Inside me,” I beg, like he always requests. “Please.”
My reward is the mind-numbing tweak of my nipple and his teeth sinking into my collarbone for jolts of delightful pain as he swipes his crown jewel over my clit in a delicious taunt. A zing rockets through me, my back arching and my vision clouding from simple touches.
The decadent torture is brief though. He notches the head at my entrance.
And with a single merciless thrust, he slams inside me, plastering my back to the vibrating view of sweeping plains, caressed by jagged peaks and flourishing evergreens.
The same striking landscape greets us on the other side.
We’re surrounded by life and art and dreamy escapes.
But all I see is him. All I feel is him.
His potent ferocity and his unbridled devotion.
Our mess of scratches and groans and the need to be closer.
“There was a minute when I … I thought maybe … you’re real.” He locks those enigmatic ocean eyes on me, gritting his teeth through a punishing pump while his hand gently cradles my cheek. “You’re my home, Sylv. I will always come for you.”
“I know.” I grant him a frantic nod before our mouths collide again, extending the truth he needs to hear between frenzied kisses. “I believe in you, but you’re my home, too, so I was scared.” My tongue swipes across his lips with a final appraisal. “No one steals from us though.”
He growls in agreement, and it hits me that way back in San Francisco, when he pissed me off but I left him an opening with the comment about the third coincidence, I dreamed of this. Of being wrong. Of being craved. Held and loved.
A lifelong quest for liberation, granted by the claim of a conjurer.
In a flash of delirium, time is eclipsed. The car rumbles, and there’s a whoosh of muffled soundscapes—no birds or wind or running streams. It’s tunnel vision at its very best. Sultry and depraved.
The chandeliers jangle, and dim amber sconces illuminate us in a dusk-like haze.
“Sylvie and Cash,” I mutter, snagging his earlobe between my teeth as we maintain our unforgiving cadence.
His hand curls around my throat in response, and his chuckle washes over me. “You and me, baby.”
“Always.” It’s the last word I utter as he ravages me in this traverse through the umbra.
Our railcar ruination is brutal and breathtaking. Deadly and reviving.
He loops his arms beneath my legs until my knees are skimming my shoulders.
I’m folded in half and delirious from his vicious pumps.
Wolfish and electric. Rivaled only by the jostling of the tracks.
It has me bouncing on his dick without much effort from us.
The same detail must occur to him because he steps back so we’re standing without support in the center of the speeding luxury locomotive.
His feet are shoulder width apart, his hands cup my ass, and the sparkling coal of his widened pupils in this forever tunnel is both payment and reprisal. “We’re fucking invincible.”
I cackle at that, the echo of it harmonizing with the carnal moan that chases it.
His apadravya and his ladder are engraving every moment of this soiree on my inner walls.
The rhythmic thrumming from the bumpy tracks zips through his legs, turning Cash and his hardware into a human vibrator, intent on wrecking me.
Sweat coats our skin, his dress pants shackle his ankles as he pistons his hips, and I fall in love all over again with the man who makes magic happen in the spaces others view as voids.
Agony mingles with the pleasure marring his face though. I scan him again, catching the corner of a bandage on his right thigh. He’s injured and in pain, but hell-bent on proving he wasn’t conquered.
So, as my breasts bounce and his cock spears the coveted target inside me, I brush my lips to his. “You don’t have to be strong all the time. I want to be your way too.”
“You are, baby. My only destination. Every track leads to you.” With that train-inspired proclamation, he pulls out, flips me around, and parks himself in the chair, facing our blacked-out view.
As he glides me back onto his shaft, he places my hands on the glass.
“Ride me, Sly, but don’t move those fingers, or I’ll spank this luscious ass. ”
“Do it,” I goad, moving my hands for only a beat.
With a delighted chuckle, he delivers, as promised, a swift smack on each cheek to push me to the blissful summit. It steals my breath, searing my flesh and bones and something deeper. I swivel my hips, bracing for leverage as he reaches around and swirls my clit.
There’s nothing but the dark expanse of a zooming black wall, the reflection of pale light.
And the illusion king filling me—every morsel of my being.