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She locks up, then tumbles over a precipice. The orgasm rips through her. Her body vaults into his, a broken sound pouring from her lips.

It’s good, and it’s glorious, and it’s impossible, and it sucks, and it’s confusing, and it’s exquisite.

Just as her shouts of ecstasy calm down, Sorrow starts to cry.

14

Envy

Envy freezes. With his fingers still poised inside her and his heart still detonating, he comes back to earth and gawks. He feels the muscles of his face slacken, from contorted rapture to utter bafflement.

Is he hearing things? Seeing things?

Or is she weeping?

The sight of her trembling shoulders, and that sliced arm thrown over her eyes, is an arrow between the brows. Tears leak through the stars beneath her lashes, flow down her temples, and sink into her hair.

Thunderstruck, he loses his mental footing and takes a nosedive from the heavens. What did he do wrong? Did he hurt her?

He can’t recall an incident in which he’d lost control with his partner. But then, he was lost in Sorrow’s whimpers, caught up in the undertow of them. He’d been lost ever since he caught her silhouette in the dark, draped in that cotton robe—his bright idea of a gift—with her loose hair and sleepy eyes.

The flannels had become endearing on her, but that robe? And that pert little nose, free at last of the bandage?

Not only had she wrapped herself in his gift, but she’d finally removed the offensive strip, baring her entire face to his gaze. With her quiet profile sloped toward the vista, she’d looked breathtaking.

Seconds before that moment, Envy had just finished the umpteenth glass of cordial that he’d prayed to the stars would finally knock him out.

And then he saw her. The glass had slipped from his grasp before he’d picked his jaw off the ground.

Then she’d seen him and opened her mouth, and so had he. His ribs must be nearly healed, because he hadn’t felt the next sequence of events.

Her jibes. That chase. This boat.

Her neck. And her neckline.

Envy had been so hung up on her moans, so drunk on them. It was all he could do not to swallow his own tongue or bite the open air. Up until that point, he’d never touched her in that way, nor begged permission to savor her. He hadn’t so much as seen the beautifully soaked slit between her legs, because in the past, they’d been too busy getting the job done, getting their clothes out of the way, and getting to the main event in record time.

But here, he’d discovered the satin cinch of her body and the electromagnetic fissures of her sighs, which had acted like a generator to his heart rate, blasting it into overdrive.

Has it ever been like this with anyone? Has he ever made someone sob through the aftermath?

Envy’s stomach drops. As her inner walls contract around his knuckles, he fixates helplessly on her stricken features.

Was he just that good? Or that bad?

Self-consciousness wrings him out. Concern and protectiveness propel him to withdraw his fingers from Sorrow’s body and then collect her from the boat’s floor. She doesn’t resist, her drenched face landing against his chest as he cradles her.

Sorrow cries like she mocks, like she owns it. That is, she doesn’t wail but empties herself freely.

When the noises subside, he speaks into her scalp, marginally terrified of how she’ll reply. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m j-just overwhelmed,” she hiccups.

“Will it help if I say you’re not alone there?”

“I don’t cry.”

How is this moment equally painful and pleasurable?