Page 232 of These Tears

Understanding cuts through the haze hard enough to snap my eyes open.

‘Elias,’ I gasp. ‘Don’t come inside me.’

He locks in the next breath. A rumble tears out of him and his hand captures both of mine above my head as the wood protests when he presses them against it.

His lips drag up my ear. ‘I want to fill you,’ he breathes. ‘I want to mark you. Leave something of me in you…’

My pulse hammers beneath his mouth, my legs keep pulling him deeper into me.

‘We can’t,’ I whisper, shaking as the last of the strength begins to leave me. ‘Elias, it’s dangerous.’

Our mouths lock, frantic, devouring the words between us as if kissing me is the only thing giving him strength to hold himself upright. His hips start moving again – deeper, each stroke dragging me closer to ruin while his restraint shakes apart in pieces.

‘I hear you…’

‘Elias—’ His name breaks apart against his mouth, and his tempo grows more frantic.

‘I know,’ he breathes.

Muscles begin to shake with the violence of release, but neither of us has the strength to pull away. His hand still pins my wrists. His hips grind hard until our bodies feel as though they’ve begun to fuse with one another.

‘It’s wrong. I’m wrong.’

‘No…’ I manage. ‘You’re not.’

Our eyes meet.

Another thrust, and it rubs against the place already claimed by him until it all snaps clean through me.

My back bows. A cry rips free as I tighten around him while sensation races out through my limbs in violent waves.

He holds me through it until my body begins to loosen around him, still undulating as he chases what he needs. Finally, he follows with a groan that melts against my tongue.

His release spills inside me, and another shudder tears through my body as my thighs lock around him again.

There’s no cabin.

No snow.

No lies.

Just us.

Both wrong and right, shaking against each other in the aftermath, neither of us pretending any more.

Just me letting go. And blue eyes clearer than sky, once as cold as the Nordic night, now burning brighter than the sun. His breath against my lips, my name caught in his throat, and the proof – as beautiful as it is terrible – that he is exactly what I know he is.

Mine.

39

For the next few nights, sleep becomes a theory neither of us is especially committed to testing. We steal it in minutes, tangled beneath the sheets after chores, folded together beside the fire, collapsing across the bed before darkness has properly settled.

We’re learning how to talk without turning every answer into a confession. I talk about Anna and my photography. He talks about Norway before I arrived and the life he had here while Elias Crane wrestled with Jakob Halvorsen for control. We talk about books and places and memories.

Ordinary things.

Touch has stopped being something he endures and has become something he listens to. His hand pauses before closing around my hip. His mouth stills at the smallest change in me.