Third a Kiss

I captured her chin, holding her firm. “I love you. That’s the curse you put on me. The reason I called you Jinx. The hex I felt the moment you stepped on my shores. And I’ll happily remain cursed for the rest of my godforsaken life if it means I get to keep you.”

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t lean in to kiss me.

She stayed staring into me, frowning slightly, letting the echo of my commitment puddle around us until we were an island in a sea of pledges and promises.

I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

I had no other card to play. I had no idea if I would win her, and I was too chicken shit to shake her and demand a reply because as long as she sat on my lap, then I hadn’t lost her.

It didn’t matter if she refused to give me an answer for decades. I would sit here and wait. I would hold her through every sunrise and sunset and wait.

I would wait until she gave me my freedom by admitting that she loved me back.

Please…

Slowly, she moved.

I sucked in a breath as she pushed upward with her knees, dislodging my hold in her hair.

I couldn’t lie.

My heart motherfucking broke.

After everything. After pouring out the nucleus of who I was, stained and tainted with the filth I’d carried inside me for so long, she’d made up her mind.

I’ve lost her.

I sighed heavily, slouching in place and letting my arms fall to my sides. I wouldn’t stop her from leaving. I would do whatever she asked. Even if that request meant she wanted me to keep my distance from her at all times.

Fuck!

My eyes bruised with grief, but I gritted my teeth and stayed stoic. I stared at her belly, unable to look into her stunning silver gaze as she walked away.

Goddammit, everything hurt.

My head.

My chest.

The very blood in my veins.

I’d felt loss before. So many times before. I’d watched pets being butchered and animals being tortured, and I’d mourned for them until I’d vomited up my uselessness to help.

But that pain was nothing compared to this.

She remained agonisingly silent as she poised over me, ready to push off and climb to her feet.

Only…

Her hands didn’t go to my shoulders for purchase to stand. Her hands went to my belt.

I stiffened as she unbuckled me, unbuttoned me, unzipped me.

I sucked in tattered gulps of air as her delicate hands went to my boxer-briefs and tugged them away.

I went lightheaded as she wrapped her small fingers around my throbbing hardness. I made a noise I couldn’t contain as she ran her thumb through the bead of pre-cum at the top. She pressed on the slit, sending shockwaves down my shaft and into my balls. The noise came again, torn from the bottom of my lungs, tangled with a snarl, a growl, a groan, a beg.

I was completely at her fucking mercy as she pumped my length, once, twice, then angled herself over me.

Without a word, she positioned my cock at her entrance.

Our eyes locked as my hands found her hips, holding on as she sank down my length. Slow and torturous, hot and wet and tight.

Fucking hell.

My head fell back as I gave myself permission to feel everything. Not just the physical part of what she did to me but the emotional part too. I let my heart bleed with affection. I let my lungs fog with devotion. I let my belly coil with so much fucking love for this woman.

As she sank the final distance, slotting my body into hers, enveloping everything I was as a man, she fucking owned me.

Every part.

All of it.

Forever.

Her arms looped over my shoulders, her fingers linking behind my nape. Her forehead pressed against mine so our eyelashes almost touched, blinking in shock and undiluted pleasure.

I’d never had sex like this before.

I’d never loved someone like this.

And when she moved?

I was no longer a man but full fucking beast. A beast who wanted to flip her onto her back and drive every inch inside her. To rut and mount and plunder and claim. But…thanks to Eleanor, I had a collar on. A collar that didn’t feel like imprisonment but freedom.

I belonged to her.

And I basked in her ownership.

I let her fuck me.

I shuddered each time she rose up and grunted each time she sank deep.

We found a rhythm together.

A rocking, quivering rhythm where each time we joined, we convulsed in absolute bliss.

I’d gotten Euphoria all wrong.

It wasn’t about how willing the women were or how wet they could become.

It was about this.

Love.

That was the ultimate drug.

The only drug.

I was high on it.

I was addicted to her.

I would die in withdrawal if she ever took it away from me.

My collar slipped a little and my hands skated from her hipbones to her hair.

Her hair.

The hair I loved and couldn’t stop touching. I shivered as the strands cascaded over my wrists and tickled the tops of my thighs. I gasped as Eleanor picked up the pace, riding me with lust as well as love.

We lost ourselves in each other on the bare tiles of a virtual reality room.

No furs, no fires, no caves in the middle of nowhere.

Just bare bones of what hid behind illusions. The harness, the starkness, the emotionlessness of sex without a bond.

I cradled her back as she leaned away from me, her breasts on offer for me to kiss and bite. Her breathy groan when I sucked my way down her cleavage and inserted her nipple into my mouth made me jerk with the warning of an orgasm.

I wanted this to last.

I wanted to stay inside her forever.

But my tongue amplified Eleanor’s desire, making her hips rock faster, her mouth parting with a plea, “Harder, harder, please God, harder.”

And that was it for my threadbare self-control.

Pushing up with my legs, I clawed at the harness buckle to free her then tipped forward, doing my best to protect her back as we tumbled from sitting to lying. She winced as I splayed on top of her, my weight pinning her to the ground, my cock still deep inside.

We paused for a second, staring at each other.

Shock and suspicion bright in both of us that this was happening.

That we’d once been two people with our own lives spread before us and now none of that shit mattered. All that mattered was I was hers and she was mine and the rest of the noise…it was gone.

Insignificant and totally fucking worthless.

I thrust into her, driving her against unrelenting tile.

She moaned and wrapped her legs around my ass, spreading wide, giving everything to me.

We weren’t high on elixir. I wasn’t out of my mind with desire and she wasn’t on the cusp of death needing a release. This lust between us was pure and real and no matter what I conjured in a lab—no matter the properties and pleasures my elixir could combine—it would never match this.

Planting both hands by her ears, I drove upward, giving her what she wanted.

Harder.

Deeper.

Fuck!

Her fingernails scratched my spine as I fucked her with a violence that might seem primitive and barbaric, but really, I made love to her with every molecule of my body.

I couldn’t stop the rabid need to completely fill this woman.

I couldn’t slow down the desperate pumping as I rutted and groaned, pushing her along the floor with each thrust, so fucking thankful that she’d forgiven me.