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“You dream of me?” I gasped as he hit a deeper spot.

“I dream of little else,” he said. And he didn’t mean the plaguing nightmares. It was the pieces of light that slid between them, the promises of good that kept us both going in the darkness.

I lifted myself up and lowered back down, pace increasing as I stretched around him. Tol held my hips, meeting me with each stroke. Heat built as the base of my spine, and my head dropped back, but Tol stopped moving.

“I have control here, Alabath. Remember?” He banded an arm around my waist and flipped us so my back fell gently to the ground, our clothes beneath us. “I want you to look at me when you come.”

He gripped the back of my thigh, bending my knee toward my chest, and slowly pushed inside of me once again. Just an inch, then he moved his hips back and sank forward further. He kept repeating that torturous rhythm, wringing out my pleasure.

“I need more,” I begged. Finally, with one punishing thrust, he slammed forward to the hilt.

“Fucking, Angels,” I moaned as he filled me.

Tolek rolled his hips against me so that he hit every spot I needed. When I cried out, he did it again and again. Long, languid strokes that were also hard and precise. Like he knew my body and what it craved better than anyone.

“I love you like this,” he said, kissing my neck, nipping my collarbone. “I love you unraveling for me. Only me.”

“Only you.” There was no one else—would never be anyone else. This was all I needed or wanted in my life. Him saying he loved me was a drug I’d take again and again. His praise and adoration something I could survive on.

“Faster,” I breathed. “Please, Tolek.”

He listened, snapping his hips forward in an impossibly quick rhythm as he chased both of our releases.

“Spirits, I’m close,” I told him, reaching to pull him down so I could kiss him. His stare seared, and I wanted to burn this moment into my memory, to remember the way he was looking at me right now like everything in the world began and ended with this connection between us and as long as we had that nothing else would matter.

“Come with me, Alabath.” His forehead pressed against mine, sweat beading between us. “Fall apart with me.”

Those words tore the last strings holding me together until we were spiraling through the universe, two stars set on colliding and sending the galaxy aflame around us.

Chapter Forty-Five

Tolek

Holy fucking Angels.

Finishing with Ophelia was cataclysmic. That off-kilter sensation we’d been fighting to balance? Blown away, the walls torn down, everything spinning back on its axis, in the correct direction, right where we were supposed to be.

She was made for me, a perfect fit, like I always knew we were in every other way. To find it in this sense, too, was more than I ever thought I’d experience. Because I never dared think I’d be lucky enough to experience her.

I wished for it. Every shooting star or wildflower had been for her, but not once did I dare to believe I would actually have her. I knew I wasn’t worthy of her, but I’d somehow convinced her otherwise. And now that I had her, I was never letting her go.

I kept my forehead against hers until my heart stopped pounding. I waited for the haze to clear around my thoughts, watching as her own chest stopped heaving. Then, I bent to brush my lips across hers. Her features were blissful when I pulled back, magenta eyes clouded with lust and pleasure, the lines of tension set in her brow finally fucking gone.

She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me back down. Our tongues lashed against each other, and already my cock was getting hard again.

Laughing, I did the last thing I wanted to and gave her one more soft kiss before standing up and rummaging through the pile of supplies in the corner.

“Perhaps I don’t hate being caved in as much as I thought I did,” Ophelia murmured.

Flashing her a smirk over my shoulder and catching her eyes exploring my body, I agreed. “It certainly has its perks.”

She stretched her arms over her head, more relaxed than I’d ever seen her. For a moment I watched her. The rise and fall of her breasts. The legs that stretched on for fucking ever that I wanted wrapped around my waist, head, wherever she’d let me. The gentle curve of her waist and the pale scars the lupine daimons left in the skin there—I’d hated that she’d been hurt, but her scars were damn attractive. Symbols of everything she’d fought for and survived. The way she proudly refused to cover them, how she’d kissed each of mine…

Yeah, I’d be okay never leaving this damn cave again. It was one of my new favorite places in the world. That bathing chamber off the palace ballroom had been in its place until now but was quickly surpassed.

Shaking my head to snap back to the present, I finally found a rag in the supplies—or an old tunic I ripped so the stretch of fabric resembled a rag. Whoever left it here wouldn’t mind.

I cleaned us both up then pulled Ophelia against me. Skin to skin, nothing more between us. All the secrets were on the table from both of us now. All the fears and nightmares and torment. Nothing left to hide.