Page 81 of The Fall

Thirty-Nine

We are wrecked, my throat and my thighs stippled in beard burn, my fingernail scratches woven across his shoulders. We skipped dinner; or rather, dinner was him and I was dessert. We both had seconds.

Blair rises onto his elbow. “Ready to skinny dip?”

I could melt into this bed and never move again, but he is unguarded and boyish, and how can I resist him? “Of course.”

He untangles himself from the sheets and rises, and I follow him with the sheet wrapped loosely around my waist. The night air washes over me, cooler than I expect after our sun-soaked day.

Crushed hibiscus hangs in the air, mixing with salt and a scent that belongs to the dark.

Our dock stretches into darkness, marked only by the faint glow of solar lamps.

Beyond that, the world runs velvet-blue and endless.

Blair cannonballs into the sea with a clean leap, and the splash scatters mercury droplets across the dark waves.

I throw myself after him, and the water swallows me, cool for that first shocking second, then transforming into silk. Bubbles draw feather-light paths along my skin as I push toward the surface.

Blair pops up nearby, his hair slicked back, arms moving in slow, steady circles as he treads water. “Careful,” he says, his voice serious. “Sharks really like number-two-overall draft picks.”

I flick water at his face.

He swims toward me. “I’ll protect you, though.”

“From the sharks?”

He treads closer until our knees brush underwater, and he steadies me with one arm around my waist. “From everything.”

Above us, the night sky is a bruised indigo with stars scattered across its vastness.

They look close enough to touch if we reached for them together.

Below, gentle tides tug at our bodies, smoothing us together.

The dock has become a shadow behind us, and the lights from our room ripple in golden ribbons over the sea.

Blair is nothing but shoulders and jawline and those eyes fixed steadily on me. “Torey…” he breathes. “Torey, I love you,” he whispers, so quietly that only the ocean and bone carry his words into me. “I am in love with you.”

My lips find his, underwater-wet and salt-sweet. His mouth opens against mine, warm despite the cool water surrounding us. We are weightless, suspended in the dark water. Starlight catches in his eyes, and he doesn’t let me go. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” he says.

The stars wheel overhead, but I keep my eyes on Blair’s face. My fingers follow the strong line of his jaw, memorizing this moment, burning it into me forever. “Tell me again.”

“I love you, Torey Kendrick.” His words flow into me, rich as honey. He kisses the corner of my mouth, then my chin, then returns to my lips.

This is how forever starts.

“Come inside with me,” I whisper.

His gaze never leaves mine as we swim the short distance back, hands brushing, shoulders bumping. Our clamber up the ladder is clumsy and graceless, but I reach for his hand once we’re back on land. Night breathes around us as we cross the planks, bare feet leaving wet prints side by side.

He opens the door and I pull him through, tugging until we’re inside, and we move naked through the darkness and back into our bed.

I drown in him, wide open, taking him in, my tongue mapping out every edge and hollow. I wrap my legs around him and pull him down until there’s nothing but Blair everywhere: his scent, his taste, his voice vibrating against my ear.

“Tell me what you need,” he whispers. “I want to give you everything.”

Our noses brush; his gaze locks on mine, ocean-blue darkened to midnight.

“I want you to make love to me,” I breathe.

Blair’s breath catches. “Torey.” My name breaks from his lips.

His body shifts over mine, skin against skin, every point of contact burning. The kiss breaks only when we both need air, and he rests his forehead against mine, breathing hard.

He moves above me, shifting onto one elbow while his free hand slides down my side. He kisses me again, softer. His tongue finds the seam of my mouth and slips inside, claiming, tasting, coaxing out a moan. His cock hardens against my thigh.

He starts a slow crawl down the bed, kissing my chest, his tongue flicking out to taste sweat and salt across my skin.

I arch up into him. Goosebumps rise along my inner thighs where his breath ghosts over me.

He slides his hands beneath my ass, lifting me onto his lap and wrapping my legs around his hips.

My cock is hard and aching. He wraps one broad palm around it and strokes. I gasp, soundless at first, until I’m shuddering.

His tongue swirls around the head of my cock before he sucks me deeper. He looks up at me from between my thighs, his lips sealed around my cock. Moonlight paints sharp edges across his cheekbones, turns the blue of his eyes to liquid silver. He takes me deeper, his lips sliding along my shaft.

I gasp, and I fist my hands in the sheets beneath me. “Your mouth feels so good.” He knows every inch my body better than I do.

One of his hands releases its grip on me to slide down and cup my balls, gently rolling them between his fingers. I pant as he takes me deeper, as he reaches for the nightstand without looking away and grabs our bottle of lube.

“ Please ,” I breathe.

The snap of the cap echoes in the quiet room as he coats his fingers. A tremor runs through me as he captures my lips once more. His kiss is deep and drugging, stoking the flames within me higher and higher.

He strokes my inner thigh. “Torey…” He strokes me so gently, then pushes a single finger inside me.

The stretch is a shock, a burning stretch that makes me bite down on my lower lip. But Blair is so slow, impossibly patient. He stays still until I relax around him.

Is this my first time? I’ve dreamed of being with Blair so many times that this is a homecoming, the moves already burned into my muscles, my exhales and inhales already tuned to his. He is the only man I’ve ever kissed, or ever blown, or ever gone to bed with.

I have never made love to a man—not yet.

But I have craved this so deeply and so loudly inside myself that half the wounds I’ve had to stitch closed in my soul have come from loving and craving him too much.

He doesn’t know he’s the only man I’ve ever kissed, and I only know how to touch him because of my dreams about our life that never existed.

This is the truth: he is my first, my only, my always. He is teaching my body a language I’ve only ever dreamed of speaking.

There is no other way to love him. Blair was always meant to break over me, his waves scouring my soul, tearing at my shorelines and rebuilding me. He finds me, and he builds me, and he remakes me, every damn time.

I shudder through a burning wave of pleasure, moan out his name. He kisses me through every shift and twitch, peppering my jawline, my cheekbone, my eyelids when they flutter shut.

He adds a second finger after what feels like forever.

When he slides a third finger in, I roll my hips into his hand and groan. The fullness is overwhelming, strange and perfect at once.

“Okay?” His voice is low against the shell of my ear.

“Perfect,” I whisper back.

I run my hands up his arms, over the hard muscle under hot skin. His body is tense; he’s holding back for me.

“I’m not going to break,” I tell him. “Don’t hold back.”

He studies my face, searching. Whatever he sees there makes him nod. “Tell me if it’s too much,” he says.

I push up to kiss him, catching his bottom lip between my teeth. “It won’t be.”

He moves deeper, stretching me further. I grip his shoulders, my breathing going shallow fast.

The sensation builds and builds until I’m trembling beneath him. He watches me fall apart under his touch, his eyes never leaving my face. His fingers curl inside me.

“Not yet,” he says.

His focus returns to his hand inside me, knuckles against my thigh.

He keeps curling, and I’m gone, lost in the overwhelming tide of his touch. My world dissolves into his hand moving inside me, stretching me, owning me, preparing me. I am coming apart at the seams.

The world fractures into light and heat as I’m about to crest, to spill over that impossible edge, but he pulls out of me, slowly, agonizingly.

My hips give a final, useless buck, chasing a release that has already vanished. Every nerve screams with the loss. The absence of his touch is a hollow ache where moments ago there was only him. I feel so empty?—

Until he slicks his cock and lines up against me. The sudden, shocking heat of him replaces the void inside me. His body settles over mine, and one of his hands slides to my hip, holding me steady.

Moonlight cuts across his chest, tracing the flex of muscle as he rises to position himself. My body answers, my hips tilting up. I want him so badly.

An ache that has lived in me for years sharpens to a single point.

He pushes in. My muscles clench tight around him before a slow release gives way.

The burn is immediate, a searing line drawn deep inside me, so much fuller.

It threatens to split me, but instead of breaking me, the fire transforms, melting into a molten heat that floods me.

Every nerve ending fires at once. I’ve never felt so completely consumed, so utterly filled.

My hips lift to meet him, to take him all the way.

He breathes out a groan once he’s fully inside me. “Fuck, Torey,” he moans, his voice breaking. “You’re so—” He cuts himself off, overwhelmed.

He remains completely still, the muscles in his arms corded tight with restraint. A tremor works through him, and I can read the conflict in the dark-blue of his eyes. He thinks he could break me. He doesn’t know that for the first time in my life, I feel unbreakable.

My hands slide from the mattress, gliding up his damp back to cup the back of his neck. “I’ve got you,” I whisper. “Blair, I’ve got you.”