Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
He glances up at me, and I’m already staring at him. My face is probably a battlefield of tears, sweat, and salt water, but he is looking at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He brings his hands up to cradle my face, as if it’s the most fragile thing on this godless island. His thumb slides over my jaw, up to the hinge, and then back down. I feel the rasp of it, and I want to fall forward into him.
He doesn’t rush. He takes another rag, wrings it out, and with infinite care, cleans my face. Cheekbones, temples, across my nose, along the arch of my brow. His hands are so close I can barely stand it. Having him do this is sucking the very breath from my lungs. I can’t focus when he touches me like this. How will I ever go back to a world without him in it?
“I’m sorry, Gracie,” he whispers. The way he says my name—like it hurts—splinters something inside me. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry I ever put you in this situation. But I promise you, I fuckin’ promise, that no matter what it takes, I will get you home. I will get you home and then you’ll never see me again.”
His words cause me to jolt, and a pain rips through my chest. Because the thought of never seeing him again is something I can’t comprehend. Hot, silent tears start rolling, almost a relief. He doesn’t shy away from them. He wipes them away even as they fall, and then, cupping the base of my skull, pulls my forehead to his. The tip of his nose drags along mine, slow and stupidly soft.
“What if that isn’t what I want?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. His mouth finally claims mine, and it steals every coherent thought from my head. His kiss is feverish, at first, a tangle of regret and need. My hands knot in his hair. I’m not strong enough to do much more, but he does all the work, holding me against him, bruising my lips with his own, breathing my little whimpers into himself as if he can take the pain from me by force.
He kisses my jaw, my throat, over and over. His hands roam my body, never wandering without permission, always asking in the way he hesitates, the way his breath stutters against my skin. “Tell me if it’s too much,” he growls into my ear. “Tell me to fuck off, and I will.”
But I don’t want that.
What I want is to be alive, real, right here, with him. I whisper his name, once, then again, and he breaks—just a little—and sinks his mouth to the hollow under my jaw. I drag him closer until there’s no air between us, just heat, need, and desperation. Every part of me that was dying is now screaming to be touched, to be known.
I need him.
He works the band of my sports bra up, slow enough to make me ache for it.
When I’m exposed before him, he leans down, dragging kisses down my chest.
He hoists me into his lap, cradling me. He holds me as if I’m precious, as if I’m not made of broken pieces and panic. Arms wrapped around him, I kiss him until my body aches. He lowers me back onto the bedding, and I pull him down with me, his body heavy, solid, the only thing I want.
He doesn’t take more than I can give, but what he does take is everything. Each sound, every desperate little gasp, all the splinters and fragments of myself I never thought I’d share with him again. There is nothing gentle about the way our need collides—he fills me slow and I feel every inch of it, the stretch and the ache and the unbearable rightness of him. It hurts. I want more of it. My nails find his back, and I hear him hiss against my throat.
He sets a rhythm that undoes me, deep and unhurried, like he has something to prove. Like he is trying to reach the part of me that almost didn’t make it. His breathing goes ragged first, then mine, and I arch up into him because I need him closer, deeper, more. His hand slides under the small of my back and tilts me, and I gasp so hard it scrapes my throat raw.
He feels so fucking good.
His face is buried in my neck, my arms iron around him, and we move together in the half-light—no shame, no names, just the slow burn of finally being alive again.
Afterwards, he cleans me up, his hands so gentle and careful. For such a big man, he has a way to make me feel unbreakable. Once I’m dry, he helps me with some clean clothes, then wraps me in my blanket, tucking it around me so I don’t shiver. I’m exhausted, but completely at peace.