24. Alina #2
Sweat slicks our skin, making every slide filthier.
He takes his hand out from between us and uses it to grip my hip hard enough to bruise, holding me exactly where he wants me as he pounds into me with single-minded focus.
I feel him swelling thicker inside me, the tell-tale throb that means he’s close.
“Come again,” he rasps against my throat, his voice wrecked. “I want to feel you break around me one more time.”
The command shoves me straight over the edge. I shatter a second time, my body locking down on his in vise-like spasms as a silent scream tears from my throat. The pleasure borders on pain as it floods every inch of me.
He curses and slams into me once, twice, and then buries himself with a guttural groan. I feel him pulse inside me, his release flooding inside as his hips jerk through the aftershocks. His arms give out and he collapses, catching his weight on his elbows at the last second so he doesn’t crush me.
I reach up and pull him down, anyway, needing to feel him pressed solidly against me.
We stay fused together for a while as our bodies slowly come down.
His lips brush along my pulse point in soft, reverent kisses that feel almost apologetic after the storm he just unleashed.
My fingers thread weakly through his damp hair, holding him there because I’m not ready for him to pull away.
He murmurs something that I don’t quite catch against my throat, the words muffled against my skin where his teeth had marked me moments ago.
“What was that?” I ask. My fingers tighten in his hair, tugging gently but firmly to pull him back up so I can see his face.
He blinks at me, eyes blurry and unfocused, pupils blown wide with lingering pleasure. A faint flush rides high on his cheekbones. He looks wrecked in the most beautiful way. But when he speaks again, he hesitates. “I…”
My brows crease together, and then a cold dread seeps into me, freezing any lingering warmth still pulsing through my veins.
If he tries to put distance between us again, I’ll never survive it.
Once was horrible. Twice had been torture.
A third time will downright kill me. Not metaphorically or in that poetically pathetic way you get after a bad breakup.
This would hollow me out until there was nothing left but the echo of what I used to be.
I feel it already—the fragile thing blooming inside me, tender and dangerous, cracking along the edges the longer he hesitates.
My fingers loosen in his hair without meaning to, sliding down to cup his face instead, my thumbs brushing over his cheekbones to physically anchor him here and keep him from retreating into the man I once feared.
Don’t do this.
Don’t ruin this.
Not when I can still feel the warmth of him pressed inside me, not when my heart is stupidly, recklessly close to feeling something I swore I would never let myself with him.
Love .
I shut the thought down the moment it forms.
He must see something in my face change because his expression shifts, softening in a way that steals my breath.
His arms tighten around me. One hand slides up my spine, cradling the back of my head as his fingers sink into my hair.
The other spreads wide against my lower back, using it to keep our bodies pressed flush together.
“I said…” His voice is rough. He swallows, throat bobbing, then lowers his forehead to mine again, his breath warm against my lips. “I… love you.”
The words are so quiet, I almost miss them.
But my body doesn’t.
They hit me like a blow straight to my sternum, knocking the air from my lungs. My vision blurs instantly, not from shock alone but from the sheer weight of the words I never expected to hear.
“W–What?” I whisper.
His expression pinches, bracing for impact. Like he’s already decided he’ll weather whatever pain comes next if I reject him. “I love you, Alina.”
Tears prick, hot and sudden, behind my eyes, spilling over before I can stop them.
I shake my head, disbelief temporarily robbing my sanity.
My voice quavers despite my best effort.
“Do you actually mean that? Or are you saying it because of what happened? Because you feel responsible for me after last night?”
“No.” The answer comes immediately, firm and certain. “None of that.”
I search his face desperately, looking for the lies. For the familiar armor to slide back into place as he distances himself.
There’s nothing.
Just him, raw and terrifyingly honest.
“I mean it,” he repeats, softer now.
The last of my defenses shatter instantly.
A sound tears out of my chest before I can stop it, raw and broken and far too big to contain as I surge forward and throw my arms around him. I cling to him like he’s the only solid thing left in a world that’s spent months crumbling beneath my feet.
He reacts instantly.
His arms lock around me hard enough that it steals my breath, anchoring me against his chest. One hand cradles the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, holding me there while the other splays across my lower back, keeping me pressed tight against him.
His mouth ghosts over my hair, and I feel the tremor in him when he exhales.
I cry into his shoulder, the sobs ugly and unrestrained as my body finally gives in after weeks of holding myself together from sheer will alone.
The tears ache as they come, wrought with everything I haven’t allowed myself to feel fully—my mother, my father, the gun, the blood, the choice, the fear of losing Sasha, the terror of loving him at all.
They twist together until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Until it all feels like too much and not nearly enough at the same time.
He doesn’t tell me to stop. He doesn’t try to fix it and make it go away. He just holds me and lets me come undone in his arms like this is exactly where I’m meant to fall apart.
Eventually, when the storm eases, the sobs fade into shuddering breaths.
I pull back just enough to look at him.
My hands slide up to frame his face, thumbs brushing gently beneath his eyes where moisture has gathered.
Where he’s tried and failed to hide that this has affected him to.
Seeing him like this, stripped of control and the certainty that I’d once believed was his second skin, makes my chest ache in a completely different way.
“I love you too,” I whisper. The words feel terrifying and inevitable all at once.
His breath stutters.
For a moment, he can’t look at me. His eyes squeeze shut as he exhales. His hands tighten at my back. When he opens them again, it nearly undoes me.
There’s no steel in them now. Vulnerability has replaced the cool detachment I’m so used to seeing, leaving him bare and exposed.
“Really?” he asks quietly. The word trembles just slightly.
I smile at him, lifting one hand to brush my thumb along his cheek. “Yes, Sasha,” I say gently. “I love you too.”
His eyes darken with emotion, his jaw tightening as he swallows hard, and then he leans in and kisses me again.
There’s no desperation in it this time. His mouth is warm and slow against mine, moving like he’s committing the moment to memory.
Like he’s tasting the words and making sure they’re real.
I melt into him without hesitation, my arms looping around his neck, pulling him closer as if whatever space left between us is suddenly unbearable.
When he finally rests his forehead against mine again, his breathing is steady again. There’s a quiet certainty in the way we lie together. Like this is the inevitable path we were always meant to end up going down.
Whatever comes next, whatever storms still wait beyond these walls, one truth has settled deeply and immovably between us.
We chose each other.
And neither one of us is ever letting go.