After Forever

by Jasinda Wilder

  I moved closer to him, rested my head on his shoulder. "That's all I'm saying. And as much as he came across like a callous asshole, I think that's all Dr. Murphy was saying. It's impossible, and we have to at least consider, as horrible as it seems, all the angles."

  "I can't examine all the angles!" Cade said, his voice quiet but intense. "I love her. I'll always love her. How can I just...let her go?" He clenched his fists, pressed them into his eye sockets. The next words came out in a hiss. "And what does it say about me that I have considered that? Every day that thought passes through my head. What would I do without her? Would it...fuck...would it be easier if she was...was gone? How horrible does that make me?" He knuckled his forehead so hard, so violently, that I grabbed his wrists and pulled them away.

  "It doesn't make you horrible, Cade. It makes you human." I didn't let go of his wrists. My cheek rested on his shoulder. "It's okay to think about yourself. You have to give yourself permission to be okay."

  He turned his head, shifted his torso toward mine, and suddenly we were face to face. The scant inches between us, between our faces, crackled, thick with some tension I couldn't bear to name. I wasn't breathing, and neither was he. Our eyes locked, too close. I smelled the gin on his breath.

  And then he was up, rocketing to his feet, crossing the room and slamming his fists into the refrigerator door. "I don't know how." He slammed his drink, the ice clinking, falling against his mouth as he drank, clinking again as he set it down on the counter with a groan. "The only thing I know for sure is that I'm...lost. And I don't know how to find myself."

  I stood up, set my glass beside his. Stood behind him. "You're not lost, Cade. You're hurting. You're...you're here. With me. For whatever that's worth."

  He turned in place, and suddenly I was standing looking up into his amber eyes, his conflicted, angry, hurting eyes. "But what does that mean?"

  "Does it have to mean anything? Sometimes, maybe...sometimes there's no right or wrong. Sometimes there's just...surviving."

  "Surviving?" He was close, so close to me. Tall, huge. Strong. But...somehow fragile, and in need of someone to...shelter him.

  "Surviving." I couldn't get a full breath. His gaze on mine was unwavering, and I felt dizzy, felt the gin rushing through me.

  "I survive by keeping it all...in. Down. By holding on so tight. I'm holding on, just...holding on. With all my strength. And I'm running out of strength. But...what happens when I can't hold on? When I let go?"

  We both stood on the edge of something. I sensed it, and so did he. I felt something building, something that had been burning, an ember glowing deep down, setting slow hot fire that spread, spread, and it was consuming me. Consuming him. I'd been denying the fire, denying its heat, denying its voracious teeth sunk into me.

  There was no space between us now. We were flush, but still not touching. Touch was a match lit in a room full of explosives. I didn't dare move for fear of striking that match.

  "Eden," he whispered. I only blinked in response, looked up at him. "What is this?"

  "I don't know."

  "I'm holding on for dear life, Eden. What happens if I let go?" He wasn't talking merely about hope, about belief, or about survival, I somehow knew. He was talking about the ember burning between us. It was just a single spark, a tiny point of light in a world of darkness.

  But a spark held so much potential. A spark contained all the heat and violence of a wildfire.

  I don't know which one of us moved first, but it was sudden, aggressive.

  It was a violent, gin-laced kiss, soaked in desperation.

  the maelstrom

  Caden

  There are moments in life when you know, irrevocably, that you've given in, come undone. That you've slipped, lost your balance, and fallen over a cliff's edge, that there's no climbing back up, there's no slowing the fall. You never forget those moments. They get burned into the fabric of your soul, imprinted on you, tattooed on your consciousness.

  Kissing Eden Eliot was that moment in my life. It was giving in.

  It was only lips on lips at first. Surprise, tasting like gin. Heat, tasting like strawberry-kiwi. And then her fingers curled into the sleeve of my flannel button-down, clawing at my arm. Gripping me for dear life, her fingers like daggers in my skin. My hands, once at my sides, now became tangled in her shirt, brushing flesh. Dug into her back, her waist.

  The kiss was push and pull, give and take. Pressure mounted in the kiss, heat spiraling to a thousand degrees Celsius within a heartbeat, aggression in the bruising crush of our mouths. Her hand rose, touched my cheek, trembling with furious energy. Slid over my ear, into my hair, tangled and gripped, clawed.

  Breath exchanged, a single gasping breath, and then our mouths met like glaciers colliding, and my fingers curled like talons into the soft, supple flesh of her waist beneath her sweater and pulled her against me, jerked her flush against my waist, so every curve of her body pressed into the hard lines and angles of mine.

  We kissed like devouring.

  Heat and need and gin warred for dominance in my skull, but a single mote of reason flashed into sudden brilliance, and I pushed her away, unapologetically violent. She stumbled backward, cheeks flushed, panting, hand over her swollen lips, eyes panicked, needy, raging with volcanic heat, searching me.

  "Cade...fuck...what just happened?" she gasped, her voice grating, scraping in her raw throat.

  I shook my head, taking a tremulous step away from the counter. Away from the counter, meaning...toward her. Wrong direction. I slid along the counter's edge, shuffling away, as if trying to escape the hungry gaze of a predator stalking me.

  But it was just Eden, watching me.

  I turned away from her, unable to tolerate the expression in her eyes. The fiery blaze of need, matching the animal fury pounding within me. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see. All I could feel was the scintillating imprint where her hand had touched me, as if I was scarred by the softness of her hands. I felt her lips on mine. I fought the shivering, fought the pulsing need, fought the sweetness of the way she'd tasted.

  But I felt her behind me, felt her presence. "Cade?" Her voice broke on the single syllable.

  I shook my head, denying even the sound of her voice, but I was on fire, I was lost in the grip of a drug. Desperation is a chemical, a narcotic. I was desperate for anything, for any emotion other than what I'd been living with for the last year.

  I couldn't help but turn around, shying away from her intoxicating proximity, the guilt of her very scent in my nostrils, the knowledge of her on my skin, seeping into my pores. Her gaze locked on mine, green like barium-fed flames. I resisted. Fought against it. Against her. Against needing this, needing her. It was primal need, animal hunger. I stared at her, gripping the counter edge in my hands until I heard the laminate creak and crack, my fingers aching from the pressure.

  She lunged at me, pouncing like a lion, both hands in my hair at the back of my head pulling me, jerking me into the kiss, and I did not go willingly. I kissed her back with anger. Tangled my fingers in her hair, grabbing a handful of blonde locks and tugging her head back, kissing her off-balance, holding her by her waist, one arm around her, keeping her up.

  She went limp in my arms, and I tasted blood from the force of the kiss.

  I righted her, let her go, broke the kiss with a curse. "Eden, we--we can't!"

  She backed away from me, turned to the freezer and poured way too much gin into each glass, mixing it with the remnants of the ice and gin and juice. She swallowed it pure, and I took mine, followed suit.

  She paused in drinking, rested her wrist against her mouth, the glass against her cheek and temple, staring at me sidelong. "We can't...but I can't not." She slammed the rest. Poured more.

  I drank, gin burning and mixing with the flames inside me, fueling the fire. The gin was supposed to help me make sense of it all, but it wasn't. It was only swallowing that mote of reason. And I knew, understood about myself that I was drinking the
gin to drown that atom of logic. It was the last shred of my fingernail upon the cliff face, holding me aloft with such excruciating pain, such agony. And giving in, it would be pain, further agony, new torment, but I couldn't take the horror anymore, the longing for something I'd never have, the longing for Ever when I'd never have her again.

  I'd lost all hope. When the doctor had spoken of "considering all options," I'd lost hope. When I even considered entertaining other options, the one truth binding me to the shredded notion of hope evaporated.

  And when I lost hope, I lost the will to hold everything in. To hold back. Hope was all I had, and with it gone, I was lost. So lost. I'd been lost my whole life, and Ever had been my one true north. With her gone, taken from me, I had no compass. All I had was Eden, there in front of me.

  Watching me, needing me the way I needed her. I didn't want to need her, but I did.

  I had no north, no direction, no hope. All I had left was this, giving in to this.

  "I'm lost..." I whispered.

  "Me, too." She set her glass down, carefully, gingerly, as if wary of startling a wild animal. I was that animal, caged and tensed, poised to spring. "I'm lost. You're lost. But if we have to be lost, can't we...can't we at least be lost together?"

  She was begging me to make it okay. I couldn't give that to her. I had nothing to give. I could only take, and even that was impossible. Everything was impossible.

  I couldn't look away from her, from the way the thin blue cashmere of her sweater clung to her frame, clung to her curves, to her breasts that swelled with each breath. I couldn't not see the bell of her hips and the muscle of her thighs beneath the khaki of her slacks. I knew the sight of her flesh beneath her clothes, and I knew the taste of her lips and I knew that I needed something, and she was there, all that was there, the only thing in my life that was sure, a one true thing in a hurricane world. The only breath I could catch in the battering pound of waves all around.

  She stood before me, and we both gasped for breath, panting beneath the weight of resistance. I shook, every muscle trembling with the force of denial. My hands clawed, my skull throbbed, my stomach churned, my heart pounded. I was holding back, staring down at her, my chest burning as I tried to deny the gravity of need, its pull upon me.

  "I can't hold on any longer," I whispered. "I'm drowning."

  She took the glass from me, empty now, although I had no memory of finishing the gin. "I'm sick of fighting it. I can't anymore."

  "Me, neither." I meant to say something else, I didn't know what, but all that emerged was a choked, strained, sob.

  And then I was falling, letting go, letting go. Knowing I was drowning now and that I'd never see light again, that I was descending into some dark place from which I'd never return.

  This time, the kiss was slow with fragility, no less desperate for all that, both of us trembling and unable to breathe, unable to stop this. I felt her tongue at my teeth, tasted the gin and felt her breath in my lungs and heard the whimper in her throat. We stumbled across the room, dizzy and breathless and limbs tangling, bouncing off walls and doors. She pushed me, and I pulled her. Blue cashmere bunched in my hands, fingers at the edges of the V-neck. I heard the rip of cloth, felt my fists part, and her sweater tore down the middle, fell away. Her hands pushed at me, clawed at the collar of my flannel, found where the buttons joined, and I heard buttons pop and clatter off the drywall, felt the shirt open, and we were moving again, breathless in the kiss, frantic and furious and fumbling, falling. I felt something hit the back of my knees. We were in a darkened room and her bed was behind me, tumbling me backward, and I was suddenly horizontal with Eden above me, on top of me. I felt the soft skin of her belly against mine, felt the slinking slide of her bra and the squishing crush of her tits against my chest. Nothing could stop the kiss, the incandescent driving sun-hot press of our bodies, the need for release from the pressure within us. Hands tore, slid and scraped and ripped and clawed, and palms arced and spines arched and lips met, and her weight was so deliriously what I needed in that moment that even though I knew I was committing some crime, I knew as well that I could never stop this until it was completed. I knew the direction of my fingers as they danced up her body, crawling one by one along the flesh-hidden knobs of her spine to the strap of her bra, and my fingers knew in the darkness their work of releasing hook by eye by hook by eye the catches, so that the full glorious heft of her tits fell free, and her arms twisted and she lifted and the bra flew aside. She moved so she was kneeling astride my hips, our frantic and desperate kiss as yet unbroken, mouths devouring and tongues exploring, and her hands fumbled at my belly, at my hip pockets, at the fly, finally found the button and tore it open, tugged at my jeans and remembered the zipper, lowered it, pushed and pushed and I wiggled with her and somehow her hands caught my underwear as well, and I lifted my hips and kicked the last of my clothes away. I repeated her hurried, hungry scramble to unbutton and unzip her pants and they were gone, but her panties remained, and I fumbled with them. She arched her hips up and I tugged at the lacy material, but it defied us, catching around her hips, so I growled into her mouth and gathered handfuls of lace, ripped them at one leg opening, ripped them at the other, and tugged the fabric free from beneath her ass. And then we were naked together, still at the foot end of the bed, my feet hanging off the edge.

  I tasted tongue and gin in my mouth, felt miles of skin and miles of curves pressed against me, and I couldn't help a moan from escaping. I slid my palms everywhere they would reach, following the line of her side to her hip, over the taut, muscular, generous bubble of her ass, up her spine, then curled my hands around her shoulders and tangled my fingers in her hair and kissed her with everything I had left within me, which was nothing much at all, but what I had I gave away, needing nothing but anything that wasn't misery and loneliness and agony of missing something forever lost.

  Eden arched her body into mine, coiled her body, drawing her core up to my belly, dragging her damp opening over my erection. There was nothing to say, no drawing it out. I caught her hips in my hands, bit her lip between my teeth and sucked it into my mouth and shifted my body, poised my aching cock at her entrance. She took over then, not waiting for me, not taking it slowly, simply plunging herself down around me, and we groaned in tandem, and I knew I was spiraling away, drowned completely now, down in the deepest trenches of this bottomless sea that was my dark and hopeless existence, a thing not worth calling life.

  I felt her breath catch, felt our kiss finally falter, and I couldn't breathe, either, could only claw my fingers into the flexed cheeks of her ass and pull at her, frantic for more, for the finish of this. All the weight and the pressure and the boiling heat that had been building in me, between us, it was coming free now, finding vent, and all we could do was ride the plume as it spewed us into delirium and fever dreams and panting furor.

  Her mouth stuttered away from mine, pressed open lips to my clavicle, and she drew her body up, gathered her knees beneath her weight and lifted up, providing slick friction, and then crashed down. Whimpered. Her shoulders shook, trembled. Her hands on my sides were crushing claws, digging into the spaces between my ribs, and she gasped in a sobbing moan as she lifted up again, hovered with her weight suspended on bent, powerful legs, and then sank down once more. I couldn't bear it, couldn't take the billowing fractious pressure. I felt as if I were cracking at the seams, all smoldering embers and sharp edges and weak pressure points.

  I was buried hilt deep, our bodies joined fully, and now she slid her hands up my chest, tracing the contours of my face in the darkness, feathered her hands in my hair in a gesture all her own, then clutched my skull for support as she lowered her chest to mine. My head arched backward, her mouth was on my chin, my hands were on her hips and pulling her up my body, and then together we crashed her down, and she cried out once, loudly, her whole body spasming and the walls of her pussy clenching around me and her fingers trying to crush my skull. Her mouth found mine, and she wa
s crying, shaking.

  She suddenly rolled with me, pulled me down over her and wrapped her legs around my back, clinging to me. Her hands pulled at my ass and her mouth sucked at my tongue, and then she shoved my head down and thrust her nipple into my mouth. I sucked hard and rhythmically as I began to move inside her, and I didn't hold back, attempted no finesse or tenderness, only furious pounding need, a fiery plasmic need in place of my blood.

  After a few hard strokes I lost my rhythm and found only the crush of body against body, and Eden used her hands and her feet to pull me harder, an unvoiced plea for more, begging me silently to go harder, to give all.

  Mad, frantic, furious.

  Silent.

  Then she could stay silent no longer. I felt her body clenching, spasming as she came again, and each breath was a ragged whimper in the back of her throat, rhythmed to the wild pound of our bodies meeting, and now I could only groan in the same rhythm, raw grunts torn from me with each stroke into her.

  I came with a long, low growl, a spasmodic release so hard it made me dizzy, made me weak.

  I collapsed on top of her, and she took my weight without complaint. When I could summon enough strength to move, I slid downward, curling back onto my knees, finally sitting up on my shins.

  She lay spread out, arms flung aside, legs wide, core bared and slick, breasts huge and heavy and pulled to each side by gravity. Her skin was lit dull silver by the thin glow of the moon through the wind-blown snow. She trembled all over, a quaking aftershock that jiggled her tits.

  And then, as I watched, her face contorted and her eyes squeezed shut. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. She pressed her fists to her eyes, sucked in a harsh breath, but couldn't contain the tremoring sob.

  The reality of what had just occurred juddered through me. I fell forward, crashing to the bed beside her.