Page 51 of Edge of Stars

So. Fucking. Good.

My brain resounds with the refrain as my blood unites with its light. As it explodes up my cock, flowing from me in a billion points of liquid luster. As Kara returns the explosion with the same brilliance, bursting but squeezing around me. Coaxing out my life but giving it back too. With her cries of perfect climax. With her sweat-slicked fingers, bunching around mine.

And ultimately, with her kisses. Open-mouthed, passion-filled…and tear-stung.

Even after we pull back, the sobs continue to come. I don’t try to stop them or even soothe her. She needs this part as much as everything else: the emotional release to pour out along with her physical burst. On both accounts, I battle to stay inside her. To be here for her aching soul and hurting heart as much as I was for her climax and kisses.

In a way—well, more than one—I need her tears too. They’re as much my expression as hers. The rage and confusion and frustration that are as tangled as her dress and these sheets. A morass that, maybe now, we can work together to untangle—and then cope with.

There’s no time to waste about it either.

As soon as her sobs abate, I pull out with slow gentleness. But I don’t go far. There must be sixty sheets across this gigantic bed, so I use one to clean us up instead of stepping away to find towels. That task is far down on the priorities for this respite. Though I wish the top of the queue could be something like want to do that again, I’m bumping even that priority down by several notches.

We have other things to get to first. Subjects we can’t treat like basic surface wounds.

“Maximus?”

In the simple three seconds of her murmur, I’m even more certain of the fact. There’s so much of her in the word—her exhaustion, confusion, uncertainty—but a lot is missing too. The fear and trauma that are still only a few hours old. She exposed some of it in her outburst after her climax, but I can see it all getting packed away yet again. Carefully put aside, making room for the front she thinks I want to see.

No. For the facade she needs.

The Kara who’s an expert at doing exactly this. Stowing away the ugly days, the monster people, and the clawing fears for the sake of being perfection incarnate. Faking it until she makes it for the sake of prying cameras, see-all reporters, and rabid fans.

Except that now, she’s them. And making it has turned into becoming it.

This is her survival mode.

Which leaves me with the stickiest conundrum of my life.

How do I pull her out of it but keep her breathing? How do I emotionally kill her so she can truly live?

A tender tug on my beard snaps my attention fully back to the moment. “Maximus.” Though my eyes haven’t shifted, her smile coerces me to actually focus in on the moment. And I’m troubled about her spacing out? “Hey. Where’d you go?”

She gets my fast but soft chuff. “I’m right here. Promise. Everything okay with you and—” I cut in on myself with a contemplative look. “Hmmm. Guess we can officially move on from Twiglet now, right?”

For reasons I can’t fully dissect, her answering smile helps me breathe easier. “I know it sounds weird, but I can feel her now. And even, sometimes…”

“What?” I prompt, trying to ignore her pure sexiness with her teeth against her bottom lip.

“Sometimes, I even hear her,” she confesses. “Not in any kind of creepy way. It’s more like…whispers from my soul, you know? Places that are so new inside.” There’s an attempt of a smile at the edges of her lips. “So it’s not like the two of us are having quirky conversations and tea parties.”

“Good.” I’m compelled to kiss her nose. “Because for the record, I like tea parties. But only if they have that sweet cream stuff and not just butt—”

As soon as she whips her head to the side, I chop myself short. She fills the suppression with a huff so harsh, I take a quick look for injuries.

“You know what? I’m starving,” she suddenly says. She pushes to her knees while gathering up the edges of her skirt. “You think your uncle stocks the kitchen with anything for normal folk?”

“Normal.” The reiteration inspires me to one last chance at witty banter. “You sure we can actually claim that one?”

Probably should’ve labeled it as the desperate chance—which ends as most of the ilk usually do.

“Maybe it’s damn time that we do.”

I’m eating the bitter air molecules in the wake of my woman’s adamant exit, at the end of seven words that she’s bitten out in place of so many more.

The sentences that, even if I followed her step for step downstairs, she’d still refuse to speak to me.

For right now, she needs that pride in her posture. The steadiness in her steps. And the walls in her psyche.