Chapter 29

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

Ana

I step onto the ledge of rock Flame was standing on. The water comes up to my chest, but I stride to the edge and dive in after him. He hasn't surfaced, so I go back under and search through the clear, dark water, feeling desperate to find him. With the speed vampires can move, Flame could be on the other side of the lake by now.

I dive deeper. Not seeing him, I turn like a corkscrew. On the way up, I spot a flash of gold—the moonlight catching his hair.

Our eyes meet through the water. His are full of terror. Why?

I swim slowly toward him, worried that if I move too quickly, he'll flee. But he stays still.

I stop three feet away from him, and then he kicks his powerful legs, shooting up to the surface.

I follow, and our eyes meet. "What's wrong?" I ask. "What did I say?" I thought he'd be happy.

Squeezing his lips together, his eyes fill with confusion as he shakes his head. "Fuck if I know."

"I thought you'd want to know that I love you." My stomach sinks. "Or…" Dread fills me. "Did you not mean it when you said you loved me?"

With one stroke, he glides through the water, and wraps me in his arms. "I meant every word I said." He pushes some hairs off my face. "Ana, I love you more than life. More than I imagined was possible. I feel like I'm living in a dream."

"So why aren't you happy to hear that I love you too?"

He looks toward the stars. "Fuck if I know. Clearly, I'm a head case."

I cup his cheek. "Do you want to talk about it?" My heart is thumping so hard I'm surprised it's not creating ripples on the water.

He looks into my eyes. "I am happy to hear it. I'm thrilled . I didn't expect to hear you say that—at least not tonight—but I am happy."

"Then…" I don't want to cut off his train of thought, if it's finally getting on the tracks.

"It's… None of this makes sense." Frowning, he shakes his head. "I'm terrified. But I don't get scared."

"Flame." My body drifts forward, brushing his, and sending a thrill to my core. " Everyone gets frightened. What frightens you?"

He shakes his head, clearly still confused.

"Don't you believe that I love you?"

He licks his lips. "You love Phil and Blade, and we're so different …"

"Do you think I can't love all three of you? Or are you jealous?"

"Not jealous. In fact." A look of calm passes over his face. "Now that I think about it, knowing how much you love Phil and Blade makes me love you even more."

"Really?" Joy stirs inside me.

"I love how you're able to see what I see in them." Phil smiles. "Like, you can see through Phil's gruff exterior. Even I thought he hated you, but you figured him out."

I nod, and my heart pinches with fear that Phil will never be the same again. But I can't give up hope.

"And only you can pull Blade's nose out of his books to focus on the present." Flame cups my face. "You see past his looks and strong body and recognize how hurt and fragile he is inside. How he cuts himself to dull his pain." Flame's voice breaks a little and he shakes his head. "I love how you've helped Blade. Helped him in ways I've never been able to. I've never seen him go so long without cutting himself."

My heart swells, so full of happiness and love for all three of these men, and my love for Flame expands, hearing him talk about Phil and Blade and my relationships with them. He's articulating things I've barely thought of but are true.

But it still doesn't explain what just happened. And as much as Flame admires how I saw through Phil and Blade's fa?ades, I can't seem to crack Flame's. Or at least not all of it.

"So, what made you so frightened when I said that I love you?"

He shakes his head. "Hearing those words upped the stakes, I guess. What if I lose you?"

My heart expands again. "You're not going to lose me."

He shrugs. "I've lost the only people I've ever truly loved."

"What about Blade?—"

"I do love my brothers. All three of them. But that's different. I know I'll never lose them."

I nod, trying to sift through what he's telling me. "Are you saying you've been in love before?" An odd jealousy invades my belly, making me unsure I want to hear his answer.

"No. Not in love. Not like this." He kisses my forehead. "You are definitely my first true love, darling." His hand brushes over my ribs, and flames of desire lick inside me.

"My fear doesn't make any sense." One of his legs brushes mine. "I guess I was thinking about how much it hurt when I lost my family…"

I nod, and he looks to the side. My chest pinches, thinking of the horrific story he told me, of how his family's house was consumed by fire, leaving him with horrible burns and all alone in the world.

"And my family weren't my only loss—" His eyes widen as if he's just remembered something, or someone. "At The Institute, there was a woman who looked after us for a while." He pauses, drawing in a long breath as if the air is bringing his memories along with it.

"Nonie." He says her name as if he just remembered it.

"Nonie was kind to all of us—at least when The Master wasn't around—but she was particularly nice to me. As I grew, the scars from my burns ached, and the pain would wake me up at night. Nonie would sing to me. She'd bring me warm milk and stroke my hair, until I fell back asleep."

"She sounds lovely. What…what happened to her?" Thinking of my own childhood abuse, I'm a little afraid to ask.

He looks away. "The Master caught her."

"Caught her doing what?"

"Kindness and affection weren't allowed. He was training us to be killers. Kindness was forbidden."

"Oh." Trepidation creeps up my spine, and I'm not sure I want to hear the end of this story. "Did he hurt her?"

"I don't know what he did to her." Flame's eyes fill with sadness. "With hindsight, he must have hurt her. He must have punished her for showing me kindness, but at the time, I was only focussed on what she did to me."

"What did she do? I'm so sorry." It's bad enough that their maker hurt them so much and so often.

He focuses on the water between us. "While The Master watched, Nonie beat me. In front of all the boys, she paddled my bare ass and my legs. She exposed my scars to everyone. She shamed me for them and beat me until I passed out from the pain."

"Why?" I gasp. "Why did she punish you like that?"

His jaw hardens. "Because I left a gristly piece of meat on my plate at dinner." His eyes narrow. "And after that, she never came again when I woke up at night."

"You must have felt so betrayed."

"It was a very long time ago. And shit. I just remembered another woman who left me before that. Just fucking disappeared. Winnie was her name, I think." He shakes his head. "She was black, like Blade."

I gasp. If Flame ever knew that Winnie was Blade's mother, he's forgotten.

I want to tell him, but his arms wrap around my waist, and he pulls me against him.

"I hadn't thought about those women in years." He looks into my eyes. "And I don't want to think about either of them right now."

He brushes against me, and I hook one leg around him, pressing our bodies more tightly together.

"What do you want to think about?" I ask.

"All the ways I'm going to fuck you in this forest."

"Oh, you are, are you?" I push away from him, swimming toward shore.

He quickly catches up, leaps out of the water first, and then reaches down to pull me out too. My entire body is tingling, the cold air and water stimulating every cell, while anticipation lights them on fire.

Gathering the cushions, Flame leads me back to the picnic area and our untouched basket. "You must be freezing." He cups my chin.

"I can think of something that would warm me up."

He drapes the blanket around me, and the wool instantly warms me.

"I didn't mean the blanket." I run my hands over his chest, tracing my fingers over his solid pectorals and around his nipples.

He sucks in a breath, and I wonder if men are as sensitive there as I am, but I don't get a chance to ask, because his lips capture mine in a slow but ravenous kiss that delivers so much meaning, and carries so much feeling and passion, I feel like I'm floating. Then I realize the floating is more than a feeling. My feet are no longer on the ground.

Swaddled in the blanket, I'm swept into his arms. Moving smoothly, and before I have time to fully register the change of position, he lies me atop the smooth boulder. My back arches over the rounded stone, my head falling back, and his face follows mine, our lips still joined in the most perfect kiss that simultaneously delivers everything that I need but leaving me wanting so much more.

His hands slide along my body, parting the blanket, and I'm rewarded as his skin contacts mine—at once electric and comforting—and sparking even higher levels of need inside me. As we continue to kiss, his clever hands explore everywhere at once, and mine roam too, wherever they can reach on his much bigger body, wanting to analyze every inch of him, to better know how to bring him pleasure.

And just as I think the word pleasure, Flame notches the head of his cock against my sex. The pressure generates heat that rushes through me in a wave of near ecstasy. Taking my hands, he pushes my arms up over my head, fully arching my body over the rock and looking into my eyes.

"Do you remember our first time together?" he asks, and I nod.

Even though it went against their code, Flame showed me a kindness that day by feeding me and taking care of me after, so I wouldn't need to do either act in public, or with a stranger.

My body is pulsing inside, contracting over and over, as the memories join my anticipation. The first few times we were together were rough and impersonal, but they were also the first times I understood true sexual pleasure. The first time I truly understood how it felt to be a mature, sexual being.

"I was so rough with you." He bends to kiss me softly, and the movement presses his cock even more firmly against my entrance. "I'm sorry about that." He removes a stray pin from my hair and then fans the wet mess over the rock behind me.

"I'd fucked a ton of women before that, but had no idea how to make love."

"Please, don't apologize. It was…it was very good for me, nonetheless." I look into his blue eyes, which are darkening as his pupils dilate. "Before that day, I never knew sex could feel so good."

"You helped me discover that too." He kisses my nose, then my eyelids, and then my cheekbones. "But in the opposite way, I guess." A warm smile brushes his lips. "It never occurred to me that someone else's pleasure—me seeing evidence of their pleasure—could heighten my own."

I smile softly, loving this walk down memory lane, even if it's causing a delay to getting what my body craves.

"From now on." He looks deep into my eyes. "From now on, my only focus, my entire purpose in life is bringing you pleasure. Observing your rapture—even if I'm not the one delivering it at the time."

His hips push forward, and he breaches my entrance.

I suck in a breath, my chest rising as I absorb the welcome intrusion, loving how the effects of his penetration are evident in his expression too. His jaw twitches. Holding back, staying still inside me is both giving him pleasure and killing him.

I stroke his fingers as he holds mine above my head. "Seeing your pleasure," I tell him softly, "heightens my pleasure too."

His eyes widen. "Really?" He looks like this idea never occurred to him.

"Of course." I tip my pelvis, trying to draw him in deeper.

"Darling, that's the second-best thing I've heard all day." He pushes forward, filling me completely and stealing my breath. "Fuck, Ana you feel so good around my cock."

I squeeze around him. "Believe me, you feel good too."

"I'm glad to hear that darlin', because I've got a lot more where that came from."

I'm about to reply, but his hips start pumping, sliding his hardness slowly but forcefully inside me, filling every inch of me, over and over, as I lie draped over the rock, and he uses the strength of his entire body to slide inside mine.

His hands shift from my hands to the back of my head, and he cushions it, threading his fingers into my hair, holding my head and protecting it from the rock as the power of his thrusts increases, as his body keeps the rest of me in position. And all the while we never break eye contact. I can see the past, the present and the future in the blue of his eyes.

"I wish I could live inside you," Flame says, his eyes full of love. "Can we just do this forever?"

"Fine by me," I answer, absorbing the impact of each stroke and preparing for the next. Lifting my legs, I hook them around him and the slight change in angle wakes new nerves, new levels of pleasure. My body involuntarily tightens around him, clearly asserting how it agrees with the plan to keep him inside me forever.

"Squeeze me like that again, darling, and I'll have to fuck you harder."

He says it like a joke, but I purposefully tighten, using every bit of my energy to encase his cock like a vise.

"Fuck, Ana. When you do that, I see stars." He adjusts our position, lifting my torso up off the rock. Then using his legs and hips together, he starts driving into me so hard and deep, I feel like he might drill right through me and into the rock. But I love it. I love how connected we feel, how our individual pleasures have heightened and joined, how his relentless, near brutal thrusts aren't like punishments, but rewards.

Like wild animals, at home here in the forest, our bodies move together, and I cling to him, wrapping my arms and legs around his much larger and powerful body, as he takes mine with every ounce of his substantial power. Consumed by mind-blowing ecstasy, I'm still seeking more—more and more and more.

"I'm going to come," Flame yells out so loudly it echoes through the forest.

Then, I feel the hot spray of his seed filling my womb and lubricating his continuing thrusts. My own climax strikes, and I cry out. My mind exits my body as I lose all sense of time and place and reality. The only things that exist on this earth are Flame and his cock and my pleasure.

He slows his thrusts, holding me close as his stiff cock slides unbelievably smoothly now. And I bear witness to how every slight movement, every inch in or out, feels for him too. I see it all in his expression, I can feel it in his body, hear it in the beat of his heart.

"I love you, Flame." The words erupt without forethought.

He smiles. "I love you too, darling."

And as he continues to move slowly inside me, I take his face between my hands. "I really need you to hear me."

"Heard loud and clear."

His strokes continue—steady, long, deep and languid, and I've never felt this close to Flame, this intimate. My heart bursts open, and it draws his inside me too. Because more than ever, I realize that what we told each other tonight is true. Beyond true.

"I love you Flame. And I'll never hurt you. I'll never betray you. I'll never leave you. You're stuck with me now."

He grins, then pauses, buried deep inside me. "You could never escape me. I live inside you now."

"That sounds so good."

He scoops me up, lifting me off the rock and holding me tightly against his chest, my body still impaled on his cock.

I hook my legs around him as he pumps, as he raises and lowers me over his stiffness, and I look over his shoulder at the shimmering lake water. The lake's reflecting the moonlight, and the glow mirrors the warmth I feel in my heart.

Something moves in the distance, and I focus on the spot.

I stifle a gasp. Phil's eyes. From the middle of the lake, he's watching.