Chapter Thirty-Nine Aria

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Aria

My mouth opened on a shocked rasp, and my head rocked back as the Earth cracked wide open beneath me.

Light burst behind my eyes, so bright I felt it streak through my veins. So bright it was blinding.

Though in spite of it, I could still make out every aspect of Pax.

The glorious edges of his severe, exquisite face. His slashed, brutal brow. The clench of his rugged, rough jaw. More than anything, it was the love that stoked the white flames in his eyes.

It felt like the moment was held.

A beat of infinity where I was lost somewhere between pain and pleasure.

This feeling of being split apart and pieced back together.

Crushed and made whole.

It was a staggering, beautiful devastation.

Pax choked out a delirious sound of restraint as he clung tight to me, covering me like a shroud.

Like solace.

Like peace.

Part of me wondered if I was still dreaming. Locked in a realm that shouldn’t exist. Or maybe I’d drowned and I’d awakened to my own perfect eternity.

“Are you okay?” His words were shards that sent ripples murmuring through the dense, mesmerizing air.

My nails scratched down his back, the tips of my fingers trailing over his pitted, gnarled flesh.

Coarse breaths raked from my lungs as I adjusted to the stunning feel of him. A long moment passed before I was able to speak. “I told you when I first saw you that I came alive that day. But I think there was still a piece of me that was missing. A piece carved out in the middle of me that longed to be filled. And that piece doesn’t ache anymore.”

He gathered my hand and splayed it across his heart, which was ravaging at his chest, his eyes pinching tight before they opened to me. “You’re right, Aria. It doesn’t ache anymore. Not in me, either. You are my beginning. My conclusion. My completion.”

I swallowed around the rawness in my throat. “It is right. We’re right. Show me exactly what that means.”

Pax had me gathered tight against him as he slowly began to move. He watched me as he did, our gazes fettered as he loved me in a way I’d never believed I would ever get to experience.

He showed me what it meant to be touched.

Adored.

He moved slowly but wasn’t exactly gentle. I wasn’t surprised, since nothing about Pax was. It was like a dam that had been built too high had burst under the pressure. A flood of greed that washed through him and took us both under.

I moved with him, lifting my hips, desperate for him.

Heat shocked between us, skating across my frozen flesh like his touch could chase away the fear that saturated every cell of my being, and he dipped down and took my mouth like his kiss could calm the storm that rioted in my spirit. Mitigate the deep-seated reality that I couldn’t escape the danger I was in. This danger so much greater—so much more powerful—than I could fathom.

For a little while, he erased it.

Healed it.

Promised it would be okay.

A fire roared in the place that I had held for him. It burned up my insides and seared like signets being branded into my flesh.

Flames that lapped and licked and grew higher with each second that he gave himself to me, torching the horror that I felt.

Just for this moment.

Just for this time.

This time that was meant for us.

Because the terror had no place to stand right then.

Not when it was him and me.

Lights flashed behind my eyes.

Dizzying.

Euphoric.

Pax started to move faster, his chest pressed to mine and his arms curled around me. My fingers were in his hair, dragging through his white locks, which seemed to glow in the strikes that came from the sign outside the window.

Flashes of brightness that lit him up.

“Aria,” he muttered against my lips. The rugged reverberation spiraled through my senses. It sounded of a claim.

A connection that went so much deeper than the physical.

I started to jut.

Passion taking over.

A feral instinct that raged and whipped the oxygen into a disorder.

It tasted of the oxygen I’d been lacking. Oxygen I’d found in him.

Pleasure curled deep inside while the love I’d forever kept for him like a sordid secret gripped my heart in a fist.

“You found me,” I whispered into the rapture of his kiss.

It was he who’d saved me again. He who’d heard the shout of my soul. He who possessed.

Pax edged back, his expression hard and fierce. His palm came to my cheek, and he brushed the pad of his thumb over the hollow of my eye. “I will always find you, Aria. I promise, I will always find you.”

Then he pushed up onto his hand. It changed the angle as he drove deeper, and he let his other hand slide down over my breasts, then my belly.

Need ricocheted through me when he drifted lower between my thighs and began to rub his fingertips over the sensitive spot that had me gasping.

In an instant, my blood heated and my stomach twisted in a way it’d never done before.

Desire throbbed and pulsed.

Sparks of bliss.

I pitched and bowed, silently begging him to quicken as I chased after the sensation that grew like a storm at the edges of my being.

Flares that flickered at the edges of my sight.

I whimpered while Pax let go of a sound so deep in his chest that I felt the rumble of it all the way to my toes.

My pulse raced wild.

In sync with his.

A stampede.

Out of control.

“Don’t fight it, Aria. Sink into it. Let go. I promise that I have you. Just like you have me. You’ve always fucking had me.”

My heart squeezed. Squeezed with the amount of love that I had for him. With what he’d always meant. With what he’d come to be.

My sanctuary. My sanity. This moment of peace in the middle of a war that I didn’t think we could win.

I wondered if he could feel it.

The gravity.

Because he started to rock. The snap of his hips hard as he wound me to a place I’d never been.

“So perfect, Aria. So gorgeous. So good.” He ground out the words.

His fingers rubbed harder, stroking in time with our bodies.

A frenzy churned in the middle of it, and our connection strained so violently that I feared I might rend apart.

His breaths were harsh, and his chest expanded with each one. I inhaled them like I could draw his spirit into mine, and my nails sank deep into his shoulders to keep myself from floating away as everything intensified. As everything became too much and too little.

I wanted more.

I wanted forever.

“You have me,” he said like he’d heard my thoughts.

Pleasure built, gathering from the farthest recesses of my body.

Coiling and binding.

Rising and lifting.

Heightening to a boiling point.

The whole time, Pax watched me, never looking away as he brought me to a place that I knew could only exist with him.

Because when I split apart, it was so much more than a mere sensation that I’d never experienced before.

It was truth and light.

It was rapture.

Pure ecstasy that stretched out to touch every corner.

Heart and body and mind.

It was death.

Because there was a part of me that would never be the same.

It was an ending.

It was a beginning.

It was life.

Energy erupted as my body blazed.

An inferno of white, disorienting light.

My mind spiraled through time and realms. Thoughts flashing to when Pax and I had been young. When I didn’t understand our design but still knew he would be the most important person in my life.

And it had never changed, who he was, even though it felt like everything had right then.

Walls were toppled as new obstacles were built.

His rigid jaw was clenched as he worked over me, the man so ferociously gorgeous as he thrust and rocked and consumed.

Every sinewy muscle in his body was stretched taut, coiling and flexing beneath the feverish drag of my fingers.

Then he dropped his chest to mine, clinging to me as he drove into me so deep, and he stilled as a roar ripped from his throat.

Those tense muscles bowed as his body tremored, and a shock wave of bliss rolled through us both, rushing high to take us over and pull us under.

My body arched as his name chanted as a whisper from my lips again and again.

“Pax, Pax, Pax.”

It was prayer.

My claim.

He swallowed it with his mouth, shooting me high once again with the gluttony of his kiss.

I could taste it.

His love for me.

“Fuck, Aria. Fuck.”

Our bodies twitched and jerked and spasmed with tiny aftershocks, and he held me through them until they had completely faded.

Eventually, the bright glare that had blinded my eyes ebbed, and the inferno that had blazed dimmed to embers as his kiss slowed and became languid.

Soft, featherlight whispers.

I relished the feel of him as he exhaled in the deepest satisfaction, then sagged against me.

His beautiful body a blanket that covered mine, our hearts thudding hard against the other.

For a little while, we lay there listening to the impact of it. To the way the thunder of our hearts was the loudest thing in the room. The way they beat in sync, a thrum, thrum, thrum that hummed of completion yet still sped up in relief.

His forehead dropped to mine, and when he spoke, his words were hoarse. “A long time ago, I gave up on the idea of there being any beauty in this life. Gave up on the idea that I would ever experience any of it. I was wrong. So fucking wrong. Because there’s you, Aria. There’s you. And there could never be anything more beautiful than that.”