“Aurnia,” I said, “open your eyes. I’m not a dream that will disappear. I’m not a dream at all. Please don’t…goddammit, please don’t make me that.”
How could I be her world when I was sure that I was the one who was someday, somehow going to destroy it?
“I need this to be real.”
“It is.”
“Prove it.”
I hesitated. “How—?”
“Fuck me.”
I sucked in a breath.
What we did last night—what I’d done to her, pressing my face into her folds, licking and sucking the moans right out of her—had been wrong. But somehow, I could justify that I hadn’t taken advantage of her. That I hadn’t drawn my own pleasure from her young lithe body.
But to fuck her…to sink my hard, greedy cock into her innocent flesh, to take her, possess her, own her, to brand her with my jaded cynical hands like a tattoo she’d regret?
I almost said no. I almost pulled back. There on the precipice of my utter damnation.
If not for the rough swirl of her hand over my cock.
I let out a groan as her gravity pulled at me. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Aurnia laughed a little. Nervously. Anxiously.
“Isn’t that a question you should be asking yourself?” she said.
“I wanted you from the very moment I touched you,” I said, too fucking honest for my own good. “All I want is you. I want your body, your voice, your heat beside me at night. I want your tits in my mouth in my bed and your toes against mine under the table at breakfast and the sound of your pencil beside mine at work. I want to fuck you and love you and destroy you, Aurnia. Absolutely destroy you. But—but that’s the problem. I— You’re too innocent to be destroyed. Too young. There’s too much of life for you that doesn’t yet have to be stolen.”
“By you?” Aurnia whispered.
My finger brushed against her hipbone, just visible past the raised hem of my t-shirt.
With her eyes still closed, Aurnia said, “I’ve wanted you from the very moment you touched me. All I want is you. I want your strong arms around me to keep me safe. I want your words in my ear as you show me how to tattoo. I’ve want you to get jealous over me, to fight for me, to press me up against the wall when the shop is empty each night because I’m yours. Yours and no one else’s. I want to belong in you, Conor. In your tattoo chair. In your bed. In your ecstasy as you call my name. I’m too young to be destroyed, but I already am. All I want… All I’ve wanted is for someone to heal me. For you to heal me.”
It was the first time I’d moved since I felt Aurnia’s fingers on my cock. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to move.
There was a reason I’d restrained myself in that way: I knew that the first move would be like the first shifting of an avalanche. There was no stopping it after that. There was no stopping me after that.
My hand moved to her neck and I clung to her like that alone could keep her there. Could keep her there with me. I tipped Aurnia’s head up to mine with a thumb beneath her chin before I could stop myself, our lips crashing together.
Even still, I drew her closer. Clung to her as she clung onto me.
Because I needed her. Because I wanted her. I wanted to heal her as she healed me. Because I wanted to be her dream, even though I knew I never could be.
We gasped against each other, as Aurnia’s hand squeezed around me. As her hard nipples brushed against my searing-hot chest. As her hot pussy pressed against my thigh as she slung her leg over my hip. It was the gasp of finally reaching air after being submerged too long. Held under too long. Crushed beneath the weight of a goddamn ocean for far, far too long.
I swept my arms around Aurnia and rolled her onto her back. Aurnia’s chest rose and fell heavily. Sweat already made my t-shirt cling to the small of her back as she sucked in air. Her nipples were straining to be touched. When I brushed my finger between her legs, knees up, feet planted on the mattress, I found her soaking wet.
Any restraint I had left shattered.
I mounted Aurnia’s narrow hips. Tore off her shirt. She shivered as I sucked and bit my way down to her nipples, small, pink and peaked. Fuck. I wanted more of her. Wanted all of her.
Consequences be damned.
I tore off her panties. Chased the goosebumps down the length of her legs. I ran my greedy palms all the way back up, carefully around her bandage, even as I pushed her thighs even wider open for me.