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It was every dream I had in the dank, suffocating cell below the earth. Hell, it was every dream I had before the apocalypse even started.

Her warm body melded to my own as if she was made for me, and I for her. Everywhere we touched, we dissolved into each other. Ours kisses ratcheted up a notch in intensity until we were practically inhaling each other. Breathing each other in.

Her tongue darted out to tangle with my own, and I moaned deep in my chest.

“I’m here, Baby. I’m alive, and I love you. I won’t leave you ever again.” My hand tightened on the bottom of her shirt, tugging at the thin material. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Callie…” she moaned, reclaiming my lips in a heated, possessive kiss. My body was on fire, a reaction only Addie was ever able to evoke from me. “Please be real. I need you to be real.”

“I’m right here. I’m real.”

I was suddenly desperate. We were close, but I needed to be even closer. I needed to feel her lips, her warm body pressed against my own. I needed us to be skin to skin, nothing prohibiting us from connecting fully. The months we had been apart…

I didn’t want to think about those days. The darkness that threatened to consume me. The light that only illuminated my cell when I thought of Addie and her sly smile.

“But you’re not real,” she sobbed even as her lips descended down my neck. I arched my head back to grant her better access.

“You’re so fucking infuriating sometimes, you know that? But I love you so fucking much. Even when I want to kill you.”

Our teeth clashed together once more as I curved my hand around her waist and lowered us both horizontally on the ground. She stared up at me with wide eyes glossy with unshed tears. I hoped she could see the love I felt for her in my own. The devotion. I nipped her plump bottom lip, pulling it with my teeth.

For the first time, I captured and maintained eye contact with a girl as I stripped my shirt off, tossing the disgusting material in the corner of the room. At least my body was clean from the shower they’d allowed me to take just the night before. Small blessings, I supposed.

But Addie either didn’t notice or didn’t care as she made a sound in the back of her throat, eyes roaming over my body hungrily. I felt a brief stab of self-consciousness.

My body was nowhere like it used to be. My once defined abs were non-existent, and my skin had lost its tan. Would she think I was ugly?

As quickly as those thoughts came to me, I swept them beneath the proverbial rug. Addie loved me. I knew that, always had, and she wouldn’t care if I had horns sticking up from my head and scars distorting my face. She cared about me, the man beneath it all, and loved me unconditionally in spite of my flaws. My blemishes told a story of all I had survived, and I knew she understood that.

That self-consciousness was nothing more than my depression talking, yelling, inside me. With Addie here, in my arms, I was able to ignore the insistent voice.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered in reverence, fingers trailing over my shoulders and down my chest. She paused when she got to my stomach. I knew the skin there was red and ragged, the flesh torn and hastily stitched back together again.

“From the Ragers,” I lamented, my mind whirling, transporting me back to that night. I could still feel the phantom teeth digging into my skin, claws embedding themselves in my stomach, bodies piling on top of me until I thought I would suffocate.

And then…

Gunfire. Merciful gunfire. The sound reverberated through the room until it drowned out even the cacophony of snarls. I had assumed it was my team coming back to save me, coming to put me to rest, and I wanted to reprimand them for their foolishness.

But it wasn’t them, and I didn’t know whether to be grateful or horrified.

“It’s hideous,” I whispered as her finger traced a particularly deep and jagged scar. Goosebumps followed the trail of her finger.

“It’s a part of you,” she said firmly. Her eyes flickered up, towards my face, and I was stunned to see tears suspended on her eyelashes. “You’re here. You’re really here.”

“I’m here.” I captured her hands in both of mine, tugging them to my chest.

“Please don’t leave me.” Her voice was a cry, a plea, and it fucking gutted me. I did that to her, not her parents, not Lucian, not the assholes who kidnapped her. Me.

I knew mere words wouldn’t pacify her, so I pressed my lips to hers again. We always did better when we were kissing. Each succulent nip of her teeth on my lip, flick of her tongue, spoke louder than a thousand words.

She broke away to pull her shirt over her head before pulling my lips back to hers. My hand covered her entire back, my fingers digging into the velvety soft skin. Still kissing her, my hand inched upwards until it fingered the claps of her satin black bra. There, I hesitated, pulling back slightly to gauge her reaction.

We had kissed before, confessed our love, declared our relationship status, but we hadn’t gone any further...and not because I didn’t want to. I wanted Addie fully, every crazed and deranged piece of her. Every flaw and every perfection.

When she nodded, I unclasped the bra and watched as she slipped it down her arms. I swallowed, eyes flickering over her body.

There was a scar on her belly, similar to the one I had on mine. It was red in some areas and white in others, marring her perfect skin. No, not marring it. Somehow, the scar made her seem even more beautiful.