Fuse

by Angel Payne

  Changed—but not destroyed.

  Different—but not decimated.

  I refuse to accept any other truth. And I refuse to let him, either.

  “Reece. My beautiful man.” I twist my head while pulling his down, wetting down his forehead as I attempt to press the adoration right into his brain. “My beautiful, incredible man. My astounding, amazing hero.”

  For a long moment, he’s motionless—until he starts rolling his head in a grieving perversion of a full denial. “Not a hero,” he growls, working his hands up until he grabs me by my upper arms as if to push me away before coming to a trembling stop. And yet tangible energy still crackles through him, like embers burning beneath the bark of a campfire log. “I’m nobody’s goddamned hero.”

  I slide a hand up to the side of his face. Roll my thumb to the edge of his gaze, which is the color of the ash from that smoldering log. And surrender to another long sigh as I pour as much comfort and tenderness and devotion as I can into him. It’s not difficult. I have loved this man beyond any reason or limit since the night we met, and he’s taken my breath away through every exhilarating, kick-ass moment of the last year, but he’s never been more unspeakably beautiful to me than now.

  In his defeat.

  In his conflict.

  In his need.

  In the choice he’s making to show them all to me.

  In choosing to expose all mine as well.

  I keep my head lifted, letting him see my fresh tears—the ones I truly shed in hope instead of heartache. I frame the tense, rugged edges of his face with my pressing, marveling touch…

  Before pulling him down and kissing him with the full, tender force of my adoration.

  “Okay,” I whisper when we pull apart after an all-too-short minute. “That’s okay, baby. No more heroes tonight.” I trace the words along the line of his jaw. I stop my lips in the indent between his face and ear and rasp, “I don’t need my hero right now. But I do need my man. My lover.”

  It’s no ploy. It’s my complete truth. Even as he responds with a vehement snarl, my necessity is sealed and confirmed—and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to bring out the man who owns every fiber of my heart, consumes every corner of my soul…and calls to every awakened pore in my body.

  Because of that, I welcome every note of his ferocious sound, even as he repeats it. I treasure his sizzling, mesmerizing sparks. Crave even more of his searing, penetrating fire.

  The flames I need to stoke higher.

  And do now, with steady but silken coaxing.

  “Just be my lover, Mr. Richards.” I purposely emphasize the formal address, letting my body soften and surrender as he intensifies his hold around me. I focus on offering everything to him, just as I did the last time I saw this much intense conflict in him. It’s been nearly a year since then. The night we first met. In the scant hours before we fully acknowledged our inescapable, electric desire, he was exactly like this: filled with hesitation, trepidation, and fear. Of course, he’d also been certain he was about to kill me—a factor I didn’t learn about until weeks later—but that doesn’t make me blind to how he longs to deny everything he’s come to feel. He’s overwhelmed by it. Terrified by it.

  No.

  Not terrified.

  Worse.

  Every minute, every hour, and every day of the last year, the two of us have fallen into richer, deeper love with each other.

  But after what love has cost him today…

  “No heroes.” Though I’ve figured out exactly why he doesn’t want to hear the “h” word ever again, I repeat the banishment because I need it too. At the same time, I wrap my hands into his dark, lustrous hair—needing that too. With the beautiful strands in my grip, I reassure him in a throaty husk, “It’s just us, Reece. Just this.”

  At once, a gruff sound emerges from the base of his throat. “Just this?” he retorts. “Fuck.” As if the word is his personal Burst button, he grabs me even harder, one hand around my ass and the other against my spine, locking all of our body parts from thighs to necks. There’s not a single breath between us now—and I can’t think of anything more complete or right. “You’ll never be just this for me, Emmalina. You’ll never be just anything for me. You’re always, always my everything. My reason. My more.”

  All right, nothing more complete except for words like that.

  “You know what it felt like up on that roof today, knowing that in so many ways, Faline had won? Knowing that I could have ripped that victory out of her hands by throwing myself to the street below?” His stare intensifies, turning the color of braided steel cables. “You want to know how fucking tempted I was to just do it—and then why I eventually didn’t? Why every cell of my body felt like a lead brick as I got back on the police chopper but still ordered myself to do it anyway?” His lips part, revealing his gritted teeth. His nostrils flare, underlining his fierce torment. “Because you’re not just this.”

  In one breathtaking sweep, I realize I’m even more wrong than before.

  Because he’s never been more right.

  Or made me want to lunge at him with more passion, losing myself to the dizzying fall of loving him more than I ever thought I would. Then kissing him with the open urgency to prove it. Then letting him pour his long, furious moan into me in return. And tangling my high, hurting sigh with the sound. And gripping him with all the frantic fever as he does me, until our passion is nearly a wild war of wills, except that we’ve both already gotten the ultimate prize.

  The reward of each other.

  The treasure of us.

  The magic of this.

  Oh…this.

  Oh…him.

  The vigor of his lunging, sweeping mouth. The power of his towering, straining body. The strokes of his huge, possessive hands and the rolls of his muscled, mesmerizing hips. In record time, my blood is singing, my sex is throbbing, and my senses are screaming. I’m beyond the point of need, past caring what the hell he’s calling himself or me or anything else tonight. Hero? Savior? Man? Lover? It’s all true and yet none of it is, because right now he’s only my desire, my heat, my hunger.

  Only?

  No.

  He’s more. He always will be.

  “Don’t stop.” I rush out the plea while seizing his scalp harder, hating even the shallow heaves of breath between us. “Don’t stop.” I slide his forehead down against mine. “Kiss me. Touch me. Everywhere.”

  His face contorts once more, but this time, I feel every drop of the desire that motivates the expression searing away the remaining condensation of his conflict. He emphasizes the point with a pure caveman rumble, resettling his hands around the spheres of my ass. I match his sound with a primeval purr, spreading my legs to mold tighter against him, exulting in how he splays his sinfully long fingers around every inch of my clenching backside.

  It’s all so incredible.

  Because it’s all filled with him.

  Every touch, every breath, every moment, every sense. Joined with him. Getting through this with him. Helping him through it too.

  Surviving the storm. Facing the fallout. Healing the damage.

  Together.

  As it’s meant to be.

  As it always will be.

  “Yesssss.” I press the hiss up from the depths of my throat, which he’s started to attack with husky tugs of his teeth and savoring suckles of his lips. Between both, there’s the magic that has his bunny turning into a writhing, lusty snake. He intensifies my serpent side with the twirling, tantalizing treatment of his wicked tongue…and then the sublime command of his hands as he starts rocking my aching core up and down his hot, beautiful bulge…

  “Oh, yes! Oh, Reece!”

  He snarls as his erection pulses. As if his penis knows how desperately my pussy yearns for him too. As if he knows I may soon be well past the point of yearning, he hauls my legs around his waist, stands, and starts trudging through the mud.

  “Shit!” It bursts out between my stunned gas
ps as soon as he slams me against the side of the cliff. At once, he braces his legs so I can descend completely over him.

  Yearning is officially the old trend now.

  New trend?

  Desperate would be a damn good one. Critical, another good one. Or maybe more direct descriptors are a better fit here. Like soaked. Hot. Quivering. Aching. Burning.

  “R-Reece!” And after all the mental prep, that’s all I can utter? But can I be held to more as he makes short work of my workout jacket’s zipper—thank God I changed into the gear as soon as he was choppered away this morning—and then shoves a hand inside, greedily making his way for the cups of my exercise bra? Nobody would blame me if they watched how he peels down the scoop neck so forcefully, he’s just turned my boring gym wear into an erotic push-up look.

  “Damn,” he rumbles. My mind echoes with the same, though on the outside, all I manage are breaths the texture of static and sighs the strength of the thinning mud at our feet. The dirt he embeds with his deep boot prints while planting his feet wide, supporting my weight solely with his thighs, which frees up his other hand…

  “Reece!”

  To ensure he gives both my nipples those commanding pulls…

  “Ahhhh!”

  And then his consuming bites…

  “Damn. Damn!”

  But at once licking away the brief pain, transforming it into zinging pleasure. Liquid heat that swirls down into my most secret center…

  “Ohhhh, shit!”

  Before I’m wordless and breathless and at last able to drop my gaze—onto the iridescent blue X’s he’s licked into existence across my breasts.

  “Oh, dear hell.”

  At the center of the crosses, my nipples are buttons of aroused crimson, still pulsing with need for more of his amplified dominion. The marks aren’t like other scratches or abrasions he’s given me before. The X’s are deliberate sensual penmanship, a blatant claim.

  I’m a little unnerved.

  But a lot more aroused.

  Though not nearly as much as he is.

  I’m positive of it from the second he looks back up, raising his unblinking scrutiny from my breasts back to my face. And yes, there are still miles of dark mists in those intense gray depths, but for a second, I spot distinct flares of blue and silver too. Flashes that last long enough to reflect on the clouds of his soul…and slowly, steadily, start reminding him of himself. I watch, enraptured, as he visibly claims that knowledge. Who he really is. What he truly can be. Not just his darkness but so much of his spectacular light—the light he can only claim by embracing the fusion in his blood, powering every beat of his desire and throb of his need.

  Oh, thank God for his need.

  And ohhhh yes, do I watch that come back online too.

  Thickening the mists in his eyes into smoke and transforming the breaths on his lips into rasps of pure seduction. “Tell me again, Velvet,” he dictates in that new, sultry voice, matching the tone to how he keeps swiping the pads of his thumbs across my tingling nipples. “Tell me…exactly what you want.” He bites out the final consonant while plucking harder on my swollen tips.

  “Oh!” And of course, he’s made it impossible to think of anything except the new fire he’s unfurled through my nerves—and into my pussy. And unthinkable to accept those shocks with anything but high gasps and melting desire. “Ohhhh, God…”

  What he does to me. How he knows me. Working my flesh and fantasies like a master sculptor and his clay. Already seeing where I need to be pressed, carved, and brought to life. “That’s not the answer.” And using master’s chisels like his sure, sensual voice and his audacious, tenacious touch. Flattening his hands to more fully massage the flesh beneath those X’s, decadent and determined about his intent. “Tell me, Emmalina.”

  I open my mouth. My clutched throat isn’t cooperating. I suck down a deep breath. And then try yet again. “I…I want you to touch me.” But I’m back to practically needing a respirator, grabbing air in desperate spurts between my gasped entreaty. “Please. Touch me…everywhere. Yessssss.”

  I’ve been reduced to a state of surrender, plain and simple. What other choice do I have as he kisses me along my jaw, bringing me waves of sparkling pleasure? How do I resist the abject awe of watching him touch me, torque me, seduce me? And how can I do anything but gulp as he releases me, but only because he’s sinking to his knees before me—stripping away everything north of my navel as he goes?

  “Everywhere?” he echoes back, brushing my lower abdomen with his lips while tugging at the waistline of my workout capris. “You want me to touch absolutely everything?”

  I give in to an enchanted smile on top of my raging lust. I have to admit, it’s pure entertainment to watch him struggling to get my skintight leggings off without using a single finger laser. His soft but frustrated grunts are adorable—and enticing. I sort of like him a little frustrated. Okay, I like it a lot. Imbalance and flux are a pair of incredible aphrodisiacs—I should know, because the man is a master at constantly using them on me—but watching him struggle with them, and knowing it’s because of me, is a turn-on that awakens my arousal in primal, deep-jungle ways.

  Me Jane…want you Tarzan…

  As soon as the craving growls through my head, a matching sound unfurls from his throat. His gaze widens as if he really is a wild man newly sprung from the rainforest. Has he just read my psyche that clearly, or are we simply meant to be linked like this for always?

  Suddenly, his whole expression flares—stopping my heart and robbing my breath. Clearly, the same question has occurred to him too.

  Just before we’re both hit by the same answer.

  Meant to be.

  It makes no sense at all but all the sense in the world. And it reverberates in every sizzle of energy between us…every drop of truth in the charged exchange of our stares.

  It’s a truth he speaks perfectly to, dragging me back down into the earth with him. That resounds through his potent snarl as he slides an arm under my knees, compelling me to fall back into the cradle of his other arm. That makes me shiver and tremble and clench as he rakes his bright, intense stare across the nudity he slowly uncovers, finally getting the last of my capris free. That sends a perfect thrill through me as he simply holds my naked form for an extended, exquisite moment.

  That pulls out my high, aching sigh…as he covers my bare, tremoring form with his powerfully leathered one.

  It’s surreal.

  It’s primordial.

  It’s dark and dirty, mortal and cold…but tender and urgent and honest and passionate.

  It’s paradise.

  And I tell him so by grabbing his head with both hands and yanking him down until our lips mash together. Not letting him go even as our teeth knock and our breaths vanish. Molding his lips over mine so he has no choice but to lunge into me, sliding and swirling his hot, beautiful tongue with mine. Forcing the lightning collisions in his chest to collide with the wild thunder of mine, where the storm of my lust pounds and thrashes and needs…

  And needs…

  And needs…

  He shows me his own urgency by shifting his hips over mine and shoving his knees to spread my own, making more room for his throbbing crotch against my clenching pussy. By flowing his hands along my shoulders, down the sides of my ribcage, over the flare of my hips, and then out along the most sensitive parts of my thighs, until he’s swirling circles around the caps of my curled knees. Yes, because he knows even all the spots in my damn knees that make me hotter and hornier. Because he knows what to do to me…

  “Everywhere.” And he’s doing it again—speaking the exact thought in my head before I’m done with it, and in a delicious, determined murmur he uses to tickle the inside of my left kneecap. As I shudder from that heat, he adds a silken kiss to the spot. “I want to be everywhere, baby.” He reiterates the promise while giving the same languorous treatment to my right knee, not waiting for my shivers to abate before gliding his hands back
the way they came, retracing my inner thighs until he’s flirting his fingertips along the edges of my spread, quivering sex.

  I gasp.

  He growls.

  He captures my stare with his, the glints in his grays a perfect match for the emerging stars overhead, and then entrances me with more of his hypnotizing touch, tracing knowing circles along my labia before gliding inward…

  To the places where I’m softest.

  To the places where he opens unseen parts of me. Where he awakens brilliant vistas in me. Where he penetrates until I’m shaking and writhing and sighing and out of my mind with yearning for him. Craving more and more of him…

  “Everywhere.” My turn to say it, though I’m shameless about bypassing his poeticism and going right for a lusty plea. And judging by the erotic hunger across his face, that’s exactly where the man wants me. He confirms that truth with the probing persistence of his fingers, a force of three digits now, and he’s shifted one hand to my hipbone in order to brace me harder and invade me by thrusting those digits deeper.

  “Yes!” I arch into him, receiving all of it—and yet still reaching for more.

  “Mmmm.” His insolent rumble takes over his whole chest, taunting perfect tingles at my erect breasts. “Someone likes me inside her.”

  “If that someone is me, then you’re right.” I shoot for a seductive drawl, but desire turns my voice to impatience. In a rush, I claw my hands into the base of his neck. Matching my ferocity with a sabretooth rumble, he pulls them back down, forming my fingers around the black zipper at the neckline of his jacket.

  “Everywhere?” The sabretooth keeps prowling his voice, still in maddening control, even as I pull down and release the steel zipper teeth from their traps. But by the time I’ve finished snicking the zipper free, rougher breaths conquer his lungs and his nipples are as hard as styluses.

  I reach up, fascinated with their erect glory. “Yes,” I whisper. “Everywhere.”

  He groans like a torture victim holding back way too long on a scream. And maybe, after today, that’s exactly how he feels. But chunk by chunk, he’s coming back to me, and if I leave this canyon walking a little funny…well, everyone has to sacrifice for the cause in some way…