Page 60

60

Eva

We book our own private cabin on the Eurostar. My artery aches, which is something I didn’t know could happen.

Jonathan is very careful with me. Too careful. He sits across from me in the compartment. It reminds me of the day we met, except this time we’re both injured.

He’s crammed in his seat with his smudged glasses. He’s wearing a sweatshirt that says I Left My Heart in Paris . I bought it for him at the station because he couldn’t exactly go around with bullet holes in his clothes. If I ever questioned whether he really loved me, now I know he does. I know because he is wearing that sweatshirt.

“You can sit over here,” I tell him.

He’s trying to read the newspaper. He looks so normal, it kind of breaks my heart. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

“It’s too late for that.”

He shifts, uncomfortable, then scans me up and down before he stands and crosses to my side of the compartment. He drops carefully down beside me. “Do you feel okay? How are your stitches?”

We had to make some adjustments after the gunfight. Jonathan and I went into an empty restroom at the train station. We secured the door behind us, and then Jonathan repaired my stitches with his expert fingers.

I place those fingers on me now.

He looks up at me. “I thought Mas said we couldn’t have sex?”

“That was a joke.” I smile.

“Not funny,” he says seriously.

There are an infinite number of ways to have sex. There are ways I never imagined. This is one of them:

On a train, trying not to move too much because I don’t want to strain my injury, as he scatters delicate kisses down my body, searches me for any and all exposed flesh. Checking in with me all the time.

“Are you okay?”

“Are you sure?”

“I love you.”

It smells earthy outside the window, the swelling landscape of flesh. The train is thrumming, vibrating through my thighs, drumming in my teeth.

Something about the rush of the train makes it all feel so urgent, yet every movement seems impossibly slow, as if it is happening in the stars first and we are down here interpreting it, in controlled movements and human sounds.

He sticks one finger inside me. His finger curves naturally with me as I take him in. My clitoris is its own tiny universe, a territory even I haven’t completely explored. He stakes his claim there and everywhere.

I cry out, trying to let go and grab on at the same time, trying to get a grip on sensation.

So much of the sex I’ve had was bravado. It was a game of one-upmanship. A chance to prove my value: how strong I was, how flexible, how sexy and desirable and even, sometimes, how crazy and how wild.

This sex is nothing like that.

It’s so much more dangerous.