Page 50 of Undertow

I do. I will. I just…

Can’t.

She’s an anesthetic. Compassionate lips that numb the pain.

For ten damn seconds I feel like more than an imminent corpse. Like I’m a living, breathing being filled with red hot blood that’s telling a completely different story.

When she fully surrenders with a moan, I realize it’s because I have also.

We’ve melted into one.

She pulls me into her again with a hard gasp. Her hips lift for the rest, and I don’t even try to stop my body from responding this time. It’s no use. Deep down I know I’ve already broken my hard, steadfast rule:Do not expose your heart.

That heart is now a mangled mess in her hands.

“So, do you?” she breathes out.

Her face is a mask of agony, pleading for my poison.

“Do I what?”

“Have a condom?”

The cancer says yes.

Julia’s sheetsare deep violet. They also wrinkle with each furious movement. Just like blood, they tell a story with their shifting formations.

Right now, her sheets are being dragged over a firm mattress, absorbing sweat and heat and gasps of pleasure.

“Shaw,” she moans, digging her heels into my ass.

I’ve been here before. My name cried from so many lips in countless orgasms, faked and real, given and received. But never have I chased one the way I do for her. Desperate to see hercome undone and give herself over in an explosive flash of ecstasy. Never have I gotten pleasure from someone else’s.

Because as she writhes and moans with every glorious inch of her body on display, it’s her face that’s captured me. With each thrust, I lose myself in imploring eyes, begging for more than a fleeting burst of pleasure.

She wantsme. Not sex. Not gratification.Me. A connection beyond this moment.

“Yes, right there. Don’t stop,” she breathes out, her voice hoarse with her imminent eruption. I want her to have that, to have everything.

Even the things you can’t give.

Yes, but in this moment, I can give a lot.

Stars flicker in my void, ignited by wave after wave of heat spreading throughout my body with each collision. Faster, stronger, harder. We drive together, her fingers raking my skin, clawing for relief until?—

“Shaw!”

Her euphoric cry deserves its own composition book. An artistic symphony I’m already craving to hear again and again. I could too, whatever she wants, but when I sense her satisfied collapse into the silky sheets, I let myself release as well.

She wants something else right now. And for a person whose survival depends on reading these situations, I come down from my high realizing I have no fucking clue what that is.

I’ve never been here before.

A foreign ache lingers in my chest as she smiles up at me. Her gaze is saturated with the sated lethargy I’ve seen so many times. This, right here, is the moment I get what I came for, awash in the relief that it’s almost over. Except this time…

I don’t want it to be over.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” she says softly, her voice a mixture of awe and confusion.