“You shouldn’t be here.”

He sees me coming this time, sitting on the roof of his boat and watching me as I come down the docks towards him.

“I should be wherever I want to be, actually.”

He shakes his head, his jaw tight. “Not here.”

I ignore what he’s said as I step over the side of the boat. “Silas, what my dad said-”

“What your dad said is fucking true.” His words come sharp as he climbs down from the roof until he’s standing right in front of me. “I can’t be near you, Ivy,” he says icily. “I can’t be near you or anyone like you, it’s why I fucking left in the first place!”

It’s only then, in the shadows cast from lights further down the piers that I see how strained he looks. His face is drawn, his eyes burning into mine as he slowly shakes his head. He looks hurt - broken from all those years ago.

“I’m not your ‘bad boy’, Ivy,” he says quietly. “I’m not your walk on the wild side or whatever. I’m just bad. That’s it. My world and your world shouldn’t ever mix.” His chest rises and falls slowly as his eyes lock onto mine.

“Done yet?”

He glares at me. “What?”

“I said are you done yet, with all your shitty excuses.”

Maybe it’s seeing the hurt in his face, and being reminded of that knocked-down-but-not-broken boy I fell in love with all those years ago. Maybe it’s being so close to him after being apart for so long - the proximity of pheromones my body remembers.

Or maybe it’s that I’m just confused, and scared, and looking for something to grasp onto in the storm of my life. And come hell or whatever happened in the past, he’s always been the lighthouse in that storm.

But in the end, none of it matters.

Because right then, I kiss him.

I don’t even know why, or what insanity possesses me to do it, but before I know it, my lips are pressed to his, my hands sliding up his chest to his collar to pull him into me.

But when I do kiss him, the reasons why become irrelevant - lost in the whirlwind of that moment.

He holds back for one shred of second before he’s growling into my mouth, his arms wrapping tightly around me and pulling me into him. He kisses me hard right back, and I moan as his tongue finds mine, his hands sliding across my body.

The reasons leading to this moment don’t actually matter, because we’re right back to that passion from before. It’s the visceral need for each other we’ve always had, before we decided to pretend it wasn’t there. He’s pulling at the hem of my dress as my hands drop to tug feverishly his belt, and none of the years matter as we pull away pretenses and clothes and come together.

His hands slide down to cup my ass beneath the short dress, pulling me up as my legs wrap around his chiseled waist. He carries me into the houseboat, his lips never leaving mine.

It’s small, bare.

Perfect.

His strong muscled arms lay me down across his bed, finally pulling the dress from my body and letting it drop behind him on the floor. His eyes lock onto me, devouring me like I’m a meal he’s been waiting a lifetime to feast on. His shirt and his jeans join my dress on the floor before he’s crawling over me, his mouth crashing into mine again.

I gasp as he breaks the kiss, his lips sliding down my neck, down to my breasts. My back arches as he takes a nipple between his lips, one hand slowly sliding over my soft belly towards my panties. His fingers slip under them, and I moan as he finds me wet and ready for him. My legs spread as if remembering this dance, and as he moves further down my body, I lift my hips as he pulls them down my legs.

He kicks his boxers off, and I can feel my blood run hot at the sight of his body after all these years.

His chest, those grooves of his hips.

That perfect cock that I’ve never forgotten.

He’s got more tattoos and more scars than I remember, but it’s all coming rushing back as he wraps his arms around me, kissing my body. We’re bare but for the necklaces and our memories of each other, and I can feel his thick cock so hard and throbbing against me there between my legs. My body remembers what the mind never did.

His lips drag low again, leaving kisses in their wake.

“No-no,” I murmur with a moan as his tongue flicks across my thigh. “I want you now.”

His eyes drag up to mine up the length of my body. “If you think I’ve waited eight fucking years for this and that I’m not going to taste you as much as I can, than you are sorely mistaken, gorgeous.”

God, his mouth.

I jolt as his tongue drags through my wetness, teasing over my clit and making my hips buck from the bed. He’s merciless in his teasing, his tongue and his fingers pushing me higher and higher, until my body sings and I feel like I might pass out with the gasping breaths I’m somehow managing to suck in.

His tongue rolls across my clit again, and I come, biting my hand and gasping as the orgasm practically elevates me from the bed against his mouth.

And I remember now that I’ve never come as hard or as earth-shatteringly as I did with him.

And never since him.

He starts to crawl up my body as I lay there like a puddle, but I grin and pounce, flipping him over. He laughs as I jump on him, sitting astride his legs and bringing my mouth down to his neck.

Now it’s my turn.

My lips kiss and bite and suck their way down his body, remembering every hard inch of it. My eyes drink in the newer tattoos, the scars I’ve never seen.

“What’s this?”

My lips and my fingers linger on the round little scar on his side the looks like I’d imagine a bullet hole looks like.

He shakes his head, eyes sparkling at me. “It’s nothing.”

“Silas-“

“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly, kissing me. “None of it does.”

I somehow drag myself from his lips, but only because there’s more of him I want to taste. I push him onto his back on the bed as I make my way down.

God, he’s big.

So hard, throbbing in my hands, like iron and silk. I stroke him as I wet him with my tongue, teasing and making him groan.

I wrap my lips around the head, filling my mouth as I slowly move up and down. I’m loving the feel of him, how he fills my mouth and how he groans under my tongue.

He pulls me up.

“Get up here, now.”

He’s more demanding than he was, and there’s something hot about that. There’s so something so masculine about - well - the man he’s become.

My legs go astride his, and I can feel him hot and pulsing against my skin. My eyes never leave his as I reach between us, fingers circling him and drawing him against me.

He pauses, turning to stretch towards the nightstand drawer and pull a condom out, and I raise my brow.

He grins. “No one else has been here but you, you know.”

I swallow the heat that comes to my face as I start to look away. “I told you, it’s been eight years, Silas. I don’t have any sort of claim on you or any-”

“Yeah, gorgeous,” he says gruffly, stopping me with a kiss. “Yeah, you do. You always have, and always fucking will.”

He looks deeply into my eyes, the sea squall inside his own crashing like a storm.

“I’m yours.” He shrugs, like it’s the only truth left in the world. “Always will be.”

My mouth crashes into him, kissing him fiercely and gasping into his lips. He pulls away to tear the foil of the condom with his teeth before moving to roll it down his length. His hands slide over my hips to my ass, raising me up.

And then I’m sinking all the way down.

God, it’s so good.

He’s so big, and yet so damn perfect as he slowly fills me.

Perfect, like two puzzle pieces locking together exactly how they should. Exactly how they were meant to.

We stay like that, gasping at the memory of this and what this feels like with each other again.

Slowly, he brings me up, before pulling me back onto him, filling me with one stroke. He grinds deep inside, and my head falls back as we start to move together. Up and down, moving like one, riding with the motion of the waves lapping the side of the boat.

This is memory.

This is remembering.

This is fickle time shattering away as we find each other again.

When I come, it’s like the world freezes for a second. When the orgasm rocks through me like a northern storm, I’m frozen for one single second before I explode in his arms. He growls my name over and over into my ear as he comes with me, his hips rocking off the bed to meet me as we crash together.

And it’s a white light, shining through the storm and the waves.

It’s my lighthouse, all over again.