by Cole McCade
“They’re everywhere at this time of year, but there always seem to be more here,” Gabriel said, soft and low. “We just happened to get lucky enough to see it.”
Leigh stilled and turned to find him watching her from the railing. He was a thing of lovely shadows, a prince of night with fireflies reflecting in his eyes, and a tremor went through her. “This was what you wanted to show me?”
“It was.”
“Gabriel, I…”
She couldn’t find words. Her mouth didn’t want to move, when if she tried to say what she was feeling she’d just find a way to poison it, and she couldn’t stand to ruin this moment when it trembled so delicate and fragile and perfect. So she only turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as she drifted to the railing and looked out over the night, and imagined she could find just one special firefly and follow its path through all the others.
Gabriel joined her, standing at her side arm to arm, saying nothing. Words weren’t necessary, right now. Not when for just a moment, for the first time in her life, that emptiness inside Leigh felt full to overflowing. She knew it wouldn’t keep…but she’d hold on to it for as long as she could.
“They never last,” Gabriel murmured, his hand drifting down to rest against the small of her back. “But they always come back.”
“Funny how that works, isn’t it?” Leigh bit her lip, then leaned against him, tucking against his side. “Do you have a pen and paper I could use?”
Gabriel’s brows knit. “I think so.” Rough fingers brushed down her back, then pulled away. “I’ll be right back.”
His quiet stride retreated. Moments later he returned with a battered little blue spiral-bound notebook and a Bic pen. Without a word, he offered both; she smiled and uncapped the pen, then flipped to a blank page. She still didn’t know the words, how to capture this, but she had to try.
So she wouldn’t forget, and could keep a piece of this with her.
She bit down on the pen cap, then scrawled:
one night, the universe saw its own reflection and fell in love.
Gabriel leaned his elbows on the railing and watched. “What’s that, then?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Leigh glanced up at him with a smile that felt too bright to belong to her. “I keep these…notebooks, full of random thoughts. Sometimes it feels like everything in my head is fleeting and impermanent. I change from one minute to the next. I’m a different person every other day. And maybe that person doesn’t think the same things as the person she was two days ago, but there are some things she still doesn’t want to forget.” She shrugged, tracing little spirals around the edges of the page. “So some things, I write down so I’ll never lose them.”
He watched her closely, as if drinking in every word, and leaned toward her, his warmth kissing against her flesh. “And tomorrow, will you be someone who can’t stand the sight of me?”
She met his eyes, then ducked her head. “No. I don’t think I will.”
“You never look at me when you’re being honest, little mouse.”
Leigh laughed and leaned over to push him with her shoulder, then flipped to a new page and dashed off a new line.
how do you know me so well?
Gabriel lingered, studying the page, then tugged the pen from her fingers and wrote below it in bold, messy letters.
Maybe I’ve always known you, and we were just waiting to be found.
Leigh traced her fingers over the writing, feeling the faint indentations in the paper, reading each letter like braille. “I don’t understand how you can know me and still want me.”
“I don’t understand how you can know yourself and think I wouldn’t.”
“I’m a terrible person, Gabriel.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. You know the things I’ve done. The things I think. How horrible I am inside.”
“And yet you still aren’t a terrible person.” He brushed his fingers under her chin, drawing her to meet his eyes. “None of us are black and white. Not one of us, even if that’s how we try to see the world. We’ve all done good things, and all done bad. We’ve all hurt someone else, or been hurt. We’ve lied. We’ve broken promises. We’ve kept promises, too. But there’s no such thing as a villain. No such thing as a hero, either. There’s only us.” He traced his thumb to the corner of her mouth. “The wounded, the broken, the struggling, the hopeful…the lost. We find beauty in poison, and we love the bitter taste.”
She wanted to believe it. So much, especially when he looked at her that way—as if he saw something darkly beautiful inside her, something better than any perfect ideal that she could never look up to. Her heart thumped.
“Do you think lost people recognize each other, when they meet?” she whispered.
“We did,” he said, and kissed her.
Slowly, softly, he stole inside her with a sweetness that touched every vulnerable place she’d tried so hard to hide for all these years. So many people had tried to force their way inside her, staking a claim she’d never given them, but when Gabriel coaxed and whispered and asked with every tingling brush of lips to lips, she didn’t have the strength to shut him out. She swayed against him, holding on to that feeling for just a moment. She should have had a dozen kisses just like this one, first from shy clumsy boys in high school, then from slightly less awkward ones in college, then from men who saw her in the coffee shop or grocery aisle or gym and felt themselves come over all funny because of something about how she smiled or the way her hair fell over her shoulder when she turned her head. But she’d never had that chance. Not when one man had laid his claim on her before she could even be called a woman, and treated her like his property to be used and then given away.
Gabriel had no right to kiss her like this. As if he wasn’t trying to claim her, but instead asking her to stay.
She broke back. This was too much, he was too much, and she couldn’t stand to let him in so deep when it would mean leaving behind another piece of herself when she left. She backed away until her hip hit the railing, and glanced at the water. The cool, glimmering water, and she suddenly wondered how it would feel to fall into those frigid depths with her skin as hot as it was when Gabriel looked at her as if he never wanted to let her go. With a smile, she let the notepad and pen fall to the deck.
Then leaned back, and tilted over the edge.
“Leigh!” Gabriel lunged for her, but she was already falling—then gasping as her back hit the water with a cold smack that swallowed her up and plunged her into a soothing, stroking dark that enveloped her in that icy chill she loved. She let herself sink, counting her seconds of air, looking up through the water to watch the fireflies move like stars swaying to the rhythm of the universe. Closing her eyes, for a moment she imagined herself sinking forever, before she tucked her body and swept her arms and kicked back toward the lights.
She broke the surface with a laugh, slicking her hair back and treading water. Gabriel leaned over the rail, one arm outstretched, looking ready to jump in himself; she grinned.
“Sorry, did I scare you?”
Gabriel blinked, then scowled, brows dragging together. “You maddening little brat.”
He kicked his boots off, then hit the water with a splash that swamped her. Squealing, she held her arms up to shield herself and turned her face away—and before she could stop him he had her about the waist, pulling her tight against him. They drifted together, hot skin to hot skin separated by a cool shimmering glaze, while fireflies landed on their shoulders and took off again. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed the beaded water droplets from his lips, tasting them like rain.
“You’re crazy, you know,” she murmured. “Jumping in here after me like this.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just as wild as you are.” He rested his brow to hers, their noses brushing, their breaths mingling. “Have you ever been in love before, little mouse?”
Her blood rushed hot. “I thought I had. Maybe I was wrong.”
<
br /> “Maybe you were.”
“I think…part of me always confused sex with love. When it’s always been just a tool of power.” She licked her lips, lowering her eyes, following the hard track of his pulse against his glistening throat. “Or that’s what I used to think.”
He leaned closer. The prickle of his stubble caressed her cheeks; his lips drew sighing breaths against hers. “You don’t think that anymore?” he whispered, and something inside her begged sweetly, hotly, for this to be real.
“No.” She swallowed hard, fighting back the hard, scared part of her that wanted to keep the words inside. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Then what do you think sex is now?” Closer. Closer, promising a kiss he never gave, building the heat inside her until she nearly steamed the chill droplets on her skin.
“With you, or with anyone?”
His hands tightened possessively. “With me.”
Her tongue darted over her lips. She curled her fingers in the wild hair at his nape. “With you?” she whispered. “It’s just…perfect.”
“I like that answer, little mouse,” he said, and seized her lips.
Devouring. Primal. He was a primitive force of nature, and his kiss crashed over her in a torrent and pulled her under until she didn’t want to come up for air. She clung to him, clutched at him, tangling her body with his and soaking in the burning heat that tore through their damp clothing to nearly crisp her to cinders. She didn’t care that she’d had him just a few short hours ago. Didn’t care that she was at her limit, and her body couldn’t take much more. This might be the last time, and she would take him as many times as she needed to make him a permanent mark on her flesh, tattooed inside her body and soul in indelible ink that would always write his name on her heart.
He backed her through the water, powerful legs scissoring to send them gliding toward the boat. The entire time he never let her go, capturing her close and exploring deep, tracing the depths of her mouth and weakening her until her bones melted. The rungs of the ladder bit between her shoulder blades as he slammed her up against it and bit over her jaw, her throat, licking and sucking moisture from her flesh. His hips ground to hers, wet muslin and denim clinging between them, and she raked her nails down his back, clutched up handfuls of his shirt, and wrapped her legs around his waist, twisting herself against him until it felt like riding fire.
“Gabriel,” she breathed.
“Hold on to me.”
He gripped the ladder and, with a powerful flex, pulled them both up out of the water. She held tight until he swung them over the rail; rather than put her down, he swept her up in his arms and carried her into the cabin. His heavy, purposeful steps were punctuated by the splatter of water dripping off them to leave dark spots on the deck, the wheelhouse, the cabin floor. Her hair clung to her in damp ropes as he spilled her down to the bed, then pulled back to rip his shirt off.
She watched him hungrily as he stripped, moonlight dappling over his gleaming skin and pouring silver runnels over the breadth of hard-toned, rippling shoulders, the perfect chiseled cut of his chest and abdomen, and God, the lickable ridge of hard muscle arcing over his hips and flowing sinfully down to the hard cock rising between long, tautly crafted thighs. He was the perfect combination of acrobatic grace, monstrous power, and savage beauty, and she wanted him with an ache that howled inside her.
He descended on her, mouth blazing over her damp shoulders, her collarbones, leaving a stinging trail of bites. A hooked finger caught the straps of her sandals and tugged them off. But when he grasped her sundress and lifted it, she stiffened with a whimper. He stopped, the dress bunched around her hips.
“Leigh.” He spoke her name like a prayer. “It’s me. Trust me.”
Her heart rose into her throat, but she nodded and lifted her arms. He peeled the dress over her head, the clinging wet fabric sliding over her skin in cool licking tongues and raising tingling bumps everywhere. When he stripped her panties away, she closed her eyes, turning her face away with a deep flush. Fully naked before him, she pressed her legs closed and covered her chest with her arms, but she couldn’t deny the rough fingers that teased between her thighs, stroking paths of fire to heat her chill skin, delving deep to find the slick wetness that not even their little swim had washed away—her dirty little reminder of every time he’d made her scream for him today. He cupped and kneaded her sore flesh, and she lifted herself into his hand with a mewling cry as those familiar pulsating shudders started in that dark secret place below the pit of her stomach.
“Leigh,” he whispered again.
She forced herself to open her eyes. He caught her with his gaze, and held her entranced as he slipped his hand from between her thighs, fingers dripping with slickness. His tongue darted out to lick them clean, trailing with lascivious deliberation over each fingertip, every sinful part of his lips promising the devil’s own work. When he’d tasted every drop, he pressed damp fingertips to her trembling lips.
“Tell me what you want, my little mouse.”
Slowly, she let her arms fall away, leaving herself completely bared. Letting him look at her, even if some deep part of her wanted to run and hide from the simple act of giving herself so completely. Nothing to cover her. Nothing to shield her from his scrutiny, from his judgment, from the desire in silver-fire eyes that left no room for anything but need and the flickering heat of something she wouldn’t, couldn’t acknowledge.
“Hurt me,” she whispered against his fingertips, and spread herself for him.
“Ah, Leigh.” Stroking fingers trailed down over her throat, encircled, pressed into that fading collar of bruises with a loving touch, until her next gasp hitched and she arched her head back, surrendering fully. Yet he lingered for only a moment, before his broad hand spanned her body, stroked down her every line and curve, sculpting her with his reverent touch and rousing her breathlessly higher. He gripped her hips, guiding her deeper into the bed.
Then shoved her onto her stomach, snared a hand in her hair, and dragged her onto her knees.
She choked on a cry as he pushed her against the headboard, the wood biting into her breasts and stomach; she grasped hard at the planks. His body covered hers, a demon at her back, vivid heat shaped into flesh, his breaths snarling in her ear. His cock slid against the small of her back, traced down the line of her ass, smearing her skin with slick, burning-wet trails, and she curled forward with a moan as the thick, throbbing head slipped between her thighs, stroked along her slit, found its home between quivering-hot folds.
Gabriel dug his fingers into her thighs, gouging those throbbing bruise-points she loved so much, marking the stars of fresh constellations against her skin, and she screamed as he dragged her thighs apart so roughly, splitting her open, straining her to her limits. She was defenseless against him, helpless, trapped—and there was no escaping as the steel-flex hardness of taut muscles moved against her back. He plunged deep, searing against her, tearing another scream from her throat—and another and another and another, as she curled forward, sobbing with the raw, furious pleasure that burned her alive from within, until she was ready to go up in flames.
She was hardly aware of his hands on her wrists, but she felt the pull all the way through her body as he pinned them over her head, crushing them against the cabinet, one cruel hand clasping them against the wood. His other hand wound in handfuls of her hair, dragged her head back, forced her to arch back. Her body was his toy, his possession, rocked violently with his every powerful thrust. She could do nothing but submit, and keen out his name as she begged for more.
He filled her with wild witch-magic, when he touched her. When he sank his teeth into her throat and left a claiming mark bruised into her skin. When he filled her to the breaking point, spearing deep where no man had touched her before. He brutalized her. He ravaged her. He tore her apart—and yet on every breath was a near-obsessive whisper of “Leigh.” Again and again, “Leigh, Leigh, Leigh,” a compulsive chant of desire and
that terrifyingly unnamed sweetness, until the pleasure cut that much deeper and she suffered that much more for the delicious keenness of it.
She needed this. This feeling of being at once abused and cherished, used and loved, dirtied and pure. She’d thought she had this once, only for it to be a dull, empty lie compared to the raw sharp truth of this. Gabriel knew her. He knew her, inside and out, and he when he kissed and sucked at her throat and shoulders, when he flattened his hand against her stomach so she could feel the way he moved inside her, trapped against his hand, she knew she’d never feel this loved again.
And when the tears poured down her cheeks, when she choked on her own cries, when that combustion tore through her and pushed her toward a dizzying white blindness where her body was not her own and she was consumed by every thick pulsing spurting throb stretching her from the inside…
…she hated herself for her cowardice, because it only made her need to run that much more.
* * *
She’d never known this before: the full heat of her bared body pressed against another’s in the cooling sweat of sex, with not even underwear to protect her. Naked felt so much more intimate when her legs were tangled with Gabriel’s while her hair spilled over his chest, her breasts pressing against his ribs. She stroked her fingers through the light dusting of fine black hair across his chest, and listened to the faint plop of frogs jumping into the river outside. Tybalt dozed on their twined ankles, her warmth soaking through the thin sheets.
