“I know.” Her face held no colour, blood sinking inside to protect her heart. “Just…after. Tell me after.”
“Fuck, Ribbon.” I kissed her, tasting salt and misery and an end we both weren’t ready for.
As we kissed, my hands undid the buttons of her jacket and pushed it off her shoulders. Our lips disconnected as I fumbled for her jodhpur zipper. She hadn’t changed before trekking with me. She hadn’t done anything apart from follow me dazedly from the stables and over the fields to the forest.
Popping the button against her flat stomach, she watched my fingers undress her.
“I stopped taking my pill a week ago. I—” She gave me a guilty half-smile. “I didn’t discuss it with you. I threw it down the drain. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For making that decision alone.”
I kissed her, jerking her close. “You made the right one. You made the only one.”
“I want your baby, Ren. But…I don’t know if I’m ready to share you. Especially now.”
My heart sank. “Then we’ll wait. I’ll respect that.”
I’d respect it and hope to God I survived long enough to make a child with her. Hope to heaven the drugs that would extend my life wouldn’t make me sterile before it was too late.
Her hand moved again, pulling me free from my jeans and boxers until I stabbed upright between us. “How long, Ren?”
“Della…” Using my knuckle, I nudged her chin upward. “Please, stop.” I bent to press my lips to hers, expecting a refusal but earning a soul-blistering kiss instead. “After, remember?”
“After.” She nodded, her fingers stroking hotly.
My body became corrupted by her touch. Part of me was no longer interested in sex after talking about such morbid things, but the larger part was ever more desperate.
Desperate to live.
Desperate to start a new life.
Desperate to tell the Grim Reaper to fuck the hell off.
Ignoring the unsaid things between us, hiding the secrets dripping with pain, I whispered, “I want a child with you. Even if it will drive me insane the entire time you’re pregnant. Despite what happened with the ectopic scare, I want a daughter like you. I’m selfish to risk everything to have that.”
She smiled sadly. “And I want a son like you.”
“Guess we’ll have to have both, then.”
“Do we have time?”
I winced, swallowing on my shortened longevity.
Do you want to know? Are you so eager for me to break your heart?
I sucked in a breath. “I—”
“Wait. Don’t.” She pressed her lips to mine. “Just kiss me.”
So I did.
I kissed her, undressed her, laid her on her back, and slid from my clothes. Snuggling into one sleeping bag, I pulled the other up and over us, trapping our body heat.
My hand disappeared between her legs.
She jerked as I touched her, feeling her silky flesh, hot with want. Her eyes glowed sapphire as I pressed a finger inside her.
I wanted to make this last. To touch her for hours and lick, taste, and worship, but a baser desire lived within me. The knowledge she wasn’t on the pill. The idea that we could create something bigger than ourselves.
I wanted to leave her with a legacy that was more than just money or possessions. I wanted her to have a piece of me. A child with my blood in its veins and a shred of my soul in its heart.
I stupidly wanted to find some way to always be there…even when I wasn’t.
Her hips arched up, welcoming me to touch her deeper. I inserted another finger, making her wet, encouraging her to forget her grief and only remember pleasure.
I found her lips again, kissing in time to my pressure, my tongue in rhythm to my finger, my body winding tighter the longer she fondled and stroked.
For so long, I’d known her body as intimately as anyone could. I’d seen her legs grow from chubby to elegant. Her chest from flat to full. And now, I knew exactly what pleased her and how to make her submit entirely.
As I thrust deeper, she gasped into my mouth. “If we’re lucky enough to have children, I promise to love them.” She cupped my cheek, holding me steady. “But I also promise I’ll love you more. I won’t be able to help it.”
My fingers stopped, wedged tight inside her. “That’s something I can’t agree to.” Sorrow balled in my heart. “Don’t you see? I need you to love them more, Della. I need someone else to hold your heart when I can’t.”
Her breath caught, body flinched, the precipice we’d been dancing over yawning. “I hate you for this.” The fierceness in which she said it broke me.
“I know.”
“I hate you so much, Ren.”
“Hate me if you must but love me, too. Please…” Withdrawing my fingers, I climbed over her, slotting my body into hers. When I felt her damp warmth, I pushed, spreading her, filling her, invading every last piece she could give me.
Tears cascaded down her cheeks, soaking into the sleeping bag below.
I rubbed away the droplets I could and licked at the ones I missed, cradling her as I made love to her.
How many times would we have this?
How many more moments of connection?
We rocked together—gentle and almost apologetic. Our touches safe and kisses guarded. But slowly…the hurt dissolved, leaving only lust and our bodies burning with desire.
Our pace turned faster, tame blending into violence.
Carnal hunger ripped through my veins, kicking my heart, coating my skin with need.
Della writhed beneath me, meeting me thrust for thrust.
Her face wasn’t soft or open but angry and revengeful. Without speaking, she ran her fingernails down my back, deep and deliberately mean.
I bowed, groaning in pleasure-pain, my cock hardening to excruciation.
A blackness encroached my mind, filling me with a mad kind of savagery.
She felt the change. She matched it with her own.
Our lovemaking turned to war, and my thrusts switched from rocking to fucking.
“Goddamn you, Della.” Fisting her hair, I held her down as I bucked inside her. She moaned as I yanked on the strands—the same strands I’d washed and braided and brushed. The hair I’d seen wet and tangled and even blue. The hair I’d inhaled while sleeping beside her in the tent and fought a love that couldn’t be fought.
“I hate you,” she whispered as I pulled out and pushed her onto her stomach. Gripping the back of her neck, I thrust back inside her, keeping her pinned and imprisoned. “You. Already. Said. That.” I growled, sweating and aching and forever fighting a cough.
“I hate you because I love you,” she cried as I hit the button inside her that added mind-bending intensity.
“Ribbon—” I grunted as her back arched, forcing herself onto me, ramming herself down my length.
“I hate you because I won’t survive.”
My body was stiff and awkward, every neuron locked inside her. “You will. You have to.”
“I don’t want to.” Her mouth opened wide as I yanked her hair back and kissed her. My chest pressed to her back, riding her, knees digging into sleeping bags, and tent shivering with our speed.
I grunted, “You have no choice.”
“I do have a choice.”
I drove harder, deeper, crueller. “You don’t. I can’t face this if I believe otherwise.”
Her face twisted into anguish. “Fuck you.”
“I’ll fuck you instead.” Thrusting faster, I nipped at her ear. “I’ll always be inside you, Della.”
I rippled with the need to release. The toxic blend of punishment and pleasure was a dangerous place to be. I couldn’t treat her gently. I couldn’t keep my touch soft. I couldn’t be nice anymore.
She felt me losing control and tried to make me come, teeth snapping at my mouth, back hollowing as she speared herself deeper onto me.
I tried to kiss her, but she merely bit me, utter wretchedness tumbling from her soul. A second later, she moaned with joy as I gave her the fury she wanted.
I fucked her harder.
“Is this what you want?”
She moaned. “I want you forever. That’s what I want.”
“And you have me forever.”
She wriggled beneath me, activating predator instincts that planted a fist in her lower back, keeping her prone and open.
She groaned, guttural and feral, just like me. Fighting me for no other purpose than to piss me off.