59. Stolen Comm
Stolen Communion
Rafe
Iwake to her pressed against me, her back arching, my body answering before my mind even stirs.
Nature and love working in quiet accord, unbound by the filter of human self-consciousness.
I don’t think she’s awake, but her body betrays her desires.
Or maybe it’s just honesty, the way sleep makes everything simple.
We’ve tried to deny this for so long that even in dreams we found each other again.
She’s flush against the length of me, open, balanced on the edge of a question as she leans into my body and it answers, hard and wanting.
The haze between sleeping and waking dulls our willpower but heightens sensation; exhaustion makes us groggy and weighed down, but need carries us upward, second by second, reaching for each other through it.
I breathe out her name, voice choked by gravel and need. “Kasia… are you awake?”
My hands roam along the softness of her. She lets out a small whimper, that heady, involuntary sound that wrecks me as she feels me against her. I try to hold still, to be good, but it’s like swimming through quicksand. Her hips push into me again; I swallow hard.
“Mhm,” she murmurs finally, more sigh than word. “I think so. I thought I was dreaming, but you’re really here.”
She angles herself, everything about her aligned in a tease.
Her movements are all suggestions, obvious in their invitation.
Her hand finds me, guiding and sure, but she doesn’t move yet.
My breath hitches at the contact. Then she reaches behind her and pulls me in before I can think, mouth to mine, the taste of her a dream woven from need.
The kiss is pure hunger, released. I moan into her mouth and, with that, she pushes back until there’s no space left between us, until I’m inside her.
The feeling of her, wrapped around me, sparks like electricity, knocking the breath from my lungs.
We both make a sound caught between a shock and recognition, as if our bodies knew long before we did that this is where we’d end up.
She rolls her hips back into me, and the sound she makes unleashes something I’ve been trying to resist for too long. Everything in me stops holding back. I match her rhythm, the small stutter of her breath guiding me. Her moans are all the confirmation I need.
When my fingers find her, working in methodical circles along every sensitive part she’s opened for me, she shivers.
Her body tightens around mine, a ripple that nearly breaks my control.
I adjust, hand sliding to the back of her thigh, grip firm, my fingers making imprints in the plush give of skin.
I lift her leg, pull her closer, deeper.
The momentum catches and builds until there’s nothing left but instinct and pulse and the sound of her gasping into the pillow, clutching and muffling her urgency like it might calm the pounding of her heart.
But I can feel it against me, beating like a wild thing, untamed.
I press my mouth to her neck, trace up to her ear, and catch her lobe between my teeth.
She leans into it, panting. Her nails claw into my neck, sharp and grounding, like she’s making sure I don’t falter and lose our rhythm, or fall away by even an inch.
Like I might journey too far without her, if she doesn’t hold on through it.
We move, finding the same wave, the same hunger we kept pretending didn’t exist. Every motion is a confession, the kind you make with your whole body because words would only ruin it.
She shudders, a sound caught between a cry and my name, and it drags me over the edge with her.
The climax shatters through us suddenly, no warning, only release and that shared sweetness of free fall.
It’s everything and for a moment, I think it’s over, breath heaving against her shoulder, until I realize she’s still caught in the motion, unwilling to let it go—to let me go.
The feeling of being connected. I follow, still completely lost, helping her ride another wave of it.
My body obeys, stays hard for her, something I’ve never experienced but don’t question.
It’s heightened; the sensitivity of it makes me stutter with every thrust even though the climb is only a stable sensation, not upward.
Staying right in the heat of it, watching her lose control through her second climax is something I know will take up residence in my mind forever.
The perfect painting of pleasure. Then it alters from my body cooling down to heating back up the longer we stay there. When she senses it, she tries to speak.
“I don't think I can—” she trips, voice caught somewhere between plea and surrender.
I lean close, whisper against her ear between the pulses of pleasure. “You can, and you will.”
The sound of her moans climbs; I feel how she tightens around me, drawing us both toward another edge again. Her hand runs along my temple, threading into my hair, gripping like she needs me to know I can’t stop now that I've started this.
We’re overheating, two engines pushed too far.
But when I look at her face, eyes blown wide, that red streak across her cheeks and nose, sweat shining along her hairline, lips parted and trembling, I know I can’t stop now, even if I wanted to.
My body answers her call like a command.
When my pace picks up, harder and deeper, she looks at me.
She catches her breath, startled. “Rafe—Oh, God—I’m—”
I grin before she can finish and take her mouth with mine. When I roll her body again, she realizes where we’re headed and follows.
“That’s it. I’m right there. Because of you, Kasia.” I try to think of something to explain what being inside her feels like, how it’s beyond anything I’ve ever known but all that comes out is a hissed cry as she presses down against me, chasing my depth and fullness. “Fuck—”
I use a thrust as punctuation and she shivers in answer.
I know she’s close from the way her breath hitches, her body arches, how every sound from her becomes smaller, caught and breaking.
We fall apart together again, her face buried in the pillow, flushed like she’s run a marathon.
Almost shy, embarrassed at how she didn’t want to stop, how far we pushed this, just so we didn’t have to let go.
I pull her chin up, make her meet my eyes in the soft morning light, as if to say don’t dare be ashamed of this.
We lie there, both spent, shaking, somewhere between laughter and aftershock.
When she finally catches her breath, she starts to laugh, her back shaking against my chest, our skin tacky where it breaks apart and connects again with sweat.
My hand finds her throat; I pull her closer, fingers spread under her jaw, kissing her nose, then her mouth.
She tastes like blessed wine and a reminder of what we’ve just done, a stolen communion between sleep and the waking world. An offering to both.
The air is thick with the warmth of body heat and the stillness that follows chaos.
Her breathing evens out against my chest; the city outside feels suspended, as if it’s giving us a few stolen minutes before the world starts again.
I let my hand trace her arm, remembering the feel of her skin while I still can.
Eventually, I whisper, “We should probably get up. If we want to enjoy the morning before you head out.”
She nods, slow and sleepy, eyes half-open.
We move around each other in the soft shuffle of routine, showers, toothbrushes, teasing over who’s hogging the mirror.
It’s domestic, easy, the kind of rhythm that makes it feel like she’s been here forever.
For a heartbeat, it feels like this could be every morning; I have to blink that thought away before it roots too deep.
Every second is shorter than the one before.
I hand her a mug of coffee, still too hot, and gesture toward the terrace. “Come on. You should see London from up here.”
Outside, the wind cuts through the lingering heat. The skyline sprawls out in muted grays and golds, the city not quite awake yet. She steps out ahead of me, hair catching in the breeze, sunlight making everything around her glow. Even London looks softer in her light.
I sit down on the small bench and pull her gently into my lap.
For a while we just sit there, her head resting against mine, the traffic below a distant, harmless murmur.
The kind of calm that feels borrowed. When she finally looks down at me, the wind moves her hair across her face and I have to touch it, to move it back.
My throat tightens before the words even form.
“I love you.”
It comes out quiet but certain. Her eyes widen just slightly, the sunlight reflected in them turning everything gold. For a moment, neither of us moves, the city, the clouds, even the sound of the wind all seem to pause, holding that single truth between us.
She starts to open her mouth, some reflexive protest forming, that kind of gentle, self-effacing instinct she has when she doesn’t know where to put her heart.
I can see it already: the words you don’t have to say it back hovering there, the beginnings of I didn’t expect—But I shake my head before she can.
Just enough to stop it. Her mouth closes, her eyes searching mine.
“I told you I’d say it when we had proper time.
” The words come easier than I thought they would.
“It was stupid, the way I held back. Something in me thought I hadn’t earned it yet, or that if I said it, I’d never leave for the tour.
That I’d stay.” I give a small laugh, more breath than sound.
“Maybe I would have. I don’t know. But it was never you.
Never doubt. It was just… me. The way I make everything fucking complicated. ”
I pull her closer, my knees dipping to bring her level with me, and kiss her, something meant to anchor us both.
When we part, there’s a glint of tears in her eyes, the kind that don’t fall but threaten to.
I look at her, searching her eyes like she holds the answer to every question I've ever asked, and say it again.
“I love you. I don't think I've ever truly let myself love anyone. Not until you.”
This time it feels final, certain, like I’ve handed her something that’s been waiting between us since the very beginning, and she knows exactly what to do with it.
She laughs, soft, almost disbelieving and tilts her head back to the sky.
The sound is caught somewhere between joy and heartbreak.
She blinks fast, chasing the tears away before they have the chance to fall.
When she looks back at me, her eyes are shining. “Well,” she says, voice trembling just enough to betray her, “how am I supposed to leave now?”
I laugh, because there’s nothing else to do. “See? Now you’re complicating things too.”
She shakes her head, smiling, and wraps her arms around my neck, pressing a kiss to my forehead that lingers, the kind that says more than words ever could. When she finally pulls back, her lips hover over my skin.
“What am I going to do with you?” she whispers.
I huff out a laugh, and lean back, catching her eyes with mine. “That’s something you could ask my parents, my managers, several exes, and probably the entire band. I don’t think any of them have an answer yet.”
Her breath catches in amusement, but I keep my gaze on her, serious now. “But they’d all say the same thing,” I add. “That you’re the closest I’ve ever come to being happy. If there’s such a thing for me… you’re it, Kasia.”
She just stares at me for a moment, eyes wide and wet and full of that light that always makes the world right again.
And for once, I don’t try to fill the silence.
I let it exist, like the city around us.
London’s waking, the day is about to take her away, and I’m just trying to commit to memory the way she looks when the sun hits her skin.