After Forever (14 page)

This time, the kiss was slow with fragility, no less desperate for all that, both of us trembling and unable to breathe, unable to stop this. I felt her tongue at my teeth, tasted the gin and felt her breath in my lungs and heard the whimper in her throat. We stumbled across the room, dizzy and breathless and limbs tangling, bouncing off walls and doors. She pushed me, and I pulled her. Blue cashmere bunched in my hands, fingers at the edges of the V-neck.
 
I heard the rip of cloth, felt my fists part, and her sweater tore down the middle, fell away. Her hands pushed at me, clawed at the collar of my flannel, found where the buttons joined, and I heard buttons pop and clatter off the drywall, felt the shirt open, and we were moving again, breathless in the kiss, frantic and furious and fumbling, falling. I felt something hit the back of my knees. We were in a darkened room and her bed was behind me, tumbling me backward, and I was suddenly horizontal with Eden above me, on top of me. I felt the soft skin of her belly against mine, felt the slinking slide of her bra and the squishing crush of her tits against my chest. Nothing could stop the kiss, the incandescent driving sun-hot press of our bodies, the need for release from the pressure within us. Hands tore, slid and scraped and ripped and clawed, and palms arced and spines arched and lips met, and her weight was so deliriously what I needed in that moment that even though I knew I was committing some crime, I knew as well that I could never stop this until it was completed. I knew the direction of my fingers as they danced up her body, crawling one by one along the flesh-hidden knobs of her spine to the strap of her bra, and my fingers knew in the darkness their work of releasing hook by eye by hook by eye the catches, so that the full glorious heft of her tits fell free, and her arms twisted and she lifted and the bra flew aside. She moved so she was kneeling astride my hips, our frantic and desperate kiss as yet unbroken, mouths devouring and tongues exploring, and her hands fumbled at my belly, at my hip pockets, at the fly, finally found the button and tore it open, tugged at my jeans and remembered the zipper, lowered it, pushed and pushed and I wiggled with her and somehow her hands caught my underwear as well, and I lifted my hips and kicked the last of my clothes away. I repeated her hurried, hungry scramble to unbutton and unzip her pants and they were gone, but her panties remained, and I fumbled with them. She arched her hips up and I tugged at the lacy material, but it defied us, catching around her hips, so I growled into her mouth and gathered handfuls of lace, ripped them at one leg opening, ripped them at the other, and tugged the fabric free from beneath her ass. And then we were naked together, still at the foot end of the bed, my feet hanging off the edge.

I tasted tongue and gin in my mouth, felt miles of skin and miles of curves pressed against me, and I couldn’t help a moan from escaping. I slid my palms everywhere they would reach, following the line of her side to her hip, over the taut, muscular, generous bubble of her ass, up her spine, then curled my hands around her shoulders and tangled my fingers in her hair and kissed her with everything I had left within me, which was nothing much at all, but what I had I gave away, needing nothing but anything that wasn’t misery and loneliness and agony of missing something forever lost.

Eden arched her body into mine, coiled her body, drawing her core up to my belly, dragging her damp opening over my erection. There was nothing to say, no drawing it out. I caught her hips in my hands, bit her lip between my teeth and sucked it into my mouth and shifted my body, poised my aching cock at her entrance. She took over then, not waiting for me, not taking it slowly, simply plunging herself down around me, and we groaned in tandem, and I knew I was spiraling away, drowned completely now, down in the deepest trenches of this bottomless sea that was my dark and hopeless existence, a thing not worth calling life.

I felt her breath catch, felt our kiss finally falter, and I couldn’t breathe, either, could only claw my fingers into the flexed cheeks of her ass and pull at her, frantic for more, for the finish of this. All the weight and the pressure and the boiling heat that had been building in me, between us, it was coming free now, finding vent, and all we could do was ride the plume as it spewed us into delirium and fever dreams and panting furor.

Her mouth stuttered away from mine, pressed open lips to my clavicle, and she drew her body up, gathered her knees beneath her weight and lifted up, providing slick friction, and then crashed down. Whimpered. Her shoulders shook, trembled. Her hands on my sides were crushing claws, digging into the spaces between my ribs, and she gasped in a sobbing moan as she lifted up again, hovered with her weight suspended on bent, powerful legs, and then sank down once more. I couldn’t bear it, couldn’t take the billowing fractious pressure. I felt as if I were cracking at the seams, all smoldering embers and sharp edges and weak pressure points.
 

I was buried hilt deep, our bodies joined fully, and now she slid her hands up my chest, tracing the contours of my face in the darkness, feathered her hands in my hair in a gesture all her own, then clutched my skull for support as she lowered her chest to mine. My head arched backward, her mouth was on my chin, my hands were on her hips and pulling her up my body, and then together we crashed her down, and she cried out once, loudly, her whole body spasming and the walls of her pussy clenching around me and her fingers trying to crush my skull. Her mouth found mine, and she was crying, shaking.

She suddenly rolled with me, pulled me down over her and wrapped her legs around my back, clinging to me. Her hands pulled at my ass and her mouth sucked at my tongue, and then she shoved my head down and thrust her nipple into my mouth. I sucked hard and rhythmically as I began to move inside her, and I didn’t hold back, attempted no finesse or tenderness, only furious pounding need, a fiery plasmic need in place of my blood.

After a few hard strokes I lost my rhythm and found only the crush of body against body, and Eden used her hands and her feet to pull me harder, an unvoiced plea for more, begging me silently to go harder, to give all.
 

Mad, frantic, furious.
 

Silent.
 

Then she could stay silent no longer. I felt her body clenching, spasming as she came again, and each breath was a ragged whimper in the back of her throat, rhythmed to the wild pound of our bodies meeting, and now I could only groan in the same rhythm, raw grunts torn from me with each stroke into her.

I came with a long, low growl, a spasmodic release so hard it made me dizzy, made me weak.
 

I collapsed on top of her, and she took my weight without complaint. When I could summon enough strength to move, I slid downward, curling back onto my knees, finally sitting up on my shins.
 

She lay spread out, arms flung aside, legs wide, core bared and slick, breasts huge and heavy and pulled to each side by gravity. Her skin was lit dull silver by the thin glow of the moon through the wind-blown snow. She trembled all over, a quaking aftershock that jiggled her tits.
 

And then, as I watched, her face contorted and her eyes squeezed shut. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. She pressed her fists to her eyes, sucked in a harsh breath, but couldn’t contain the tremoring sob.

The reality of what had just occurred juddered through me. I fell forward, crashing to the bed beside her.
 

“Caden…” Her voice was thick, low, tattered with guilt.

She never, ever, called me Caden.
 

She lay on her back beside me, hands covering her face. I was struggling to simply breathe, to expel the air caught in my lungs.
 

“What have we done?” she asked.

I could only shake my head, my eyes burning, heart aching in my chest. “We…” I wanted to find some way to mitigate, to deny, to erase. There was nothing. “God…what did we do?”

Panic hit me. Flowed through me like magma rising in the conduit of a volcano. I sucked in a breath, finally getting a lungful of air, and then it left me in a rush of moaning, whimpering, panicking horror. I scrambled away, unable to see, shaking all over. Full-scale panic attack.

I had no idea where I was suddenly, only knew that I was on fire, that I’d done something I couldn’t take back, that I couldn’t breathe, and I was breaking apart, shivering, bones rattling. I felt a small soft careful hand on my back. Sliding up my spine, pulling my head against her breast. I could hear her heartbeat, a mad pounding to match my own.

“Don’t cry, Cade, please.” Her voice was a tiny seed of sound. “Breathe, Cade. It’ll be okay. Ssshhh. Breathe for me.”

I realized I was sobbing, I wasn’t breathing, only expelling the wracking grief and guilt within me. “Can’t…can’t…”

She took my face in her palms and twisted my head so I was forced to look at her. “Cade…look at me. Take a breath in.” I forced air into my lungs, a shuddering inbreath that made me dizzy with the sudden influx of oxygen. “Good. One more. Good. I’m here, Cade. You’re not alone. You’re not in this alone. We’re in this together.”

How was she so calm?

“What
is
this?” I pushed away from her, from the wall. I was in the corner between the bed and the wall, huddled on my knees.
 

I crawled onto the bed, lay on my back, and covered my lower half with the sheet. Eden climbed up beside me, pulled the sheet up over her chest, sitting on her knees and staring down at me. Her hair was loose and wild, blonde strays and tangles wisping in her face, in her mouth, across her eyes.
 

“I don’t know what this is. But…we can’t take it back.” She ducked her head. “I’m not—I’m not sure I’m capable of even
wanting
to, if you want the truth.”

I sat up and looked at her sharply, puzzled, shocked. “Don’t you understand that we—we—we betrayed—”

“
I KNOW!
” she screamed. “I know what we did! Do you think I don’t know? How could I not know what we just did? But it was…
fuck
…it was the best sex of my entire life.”
 

It wasn’t for me. I couldn’t say that, of course. But it was one of the most intense moments of my life. And that’s saying something huge.

She kept going. “Don’t—don’t say anything. I don’t expect you to…I know it wasn’t for you what it was for—for me. It was a betrayal, I know that. But I can’t escape the other truth.”

“What other truth?”

“That…that she might never know. That she might never find out. That she might never wake up. That—it makes me a horrible, horrible person. But that’s just my life.” She laughed bitterly.
 

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just so perfectly ironic. The best, most intense, most meaningful sex I’ve ever had, ever experienced, and it’s…it’s nothing but a mistake for you. Meaningless.”

“It wasn’t—”

“
SHUT UP!
” she screeched, shoving at me, angry, furious, dropping the sheet and not caring. “I know what that was. What this is between us. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even fucking. Like everything that’s ever happened between you and me, there’s no way to put in a box what we are, what we do, what we are to each other. You don’t love me. You’ll never love me.”

“Eden, I—”

“I said
shut up
,” she hissed, on her hands and knees, a feral animal, teeth bared, all skin and claws and bright angry eyes and hunger and something primal and furious. “You don’t, won’t…
can’t
ever love me. I know. You know. But…we
need
each other. Now, in this. We need each other. We’re the only thing we have in life. We’re orphans in a huge, scary world. We’re alone. We’re lost in the darkness together. And we have to stick together—we have to hold on to each other. I can’t face life completely alone, Cade.” She knelt in front of me, gripped my arms, her eyes exposing every raw nerve in her soul, every fear and all her vulnerability. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. But don’t…don’t tear yourself to pieces over this.”

“How am I supposed to be okay with this?”
 

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re not. But don’t lie about what it is, either.”

“You keep saying that. What is it, then? What is this?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s necessary, Cade. No one can go through life completely alone, and this, what we’re going through, there are no rules for it. There’s no map or guidebook, or anyone to tell us what’s right or wrong, or how to act or anything. There’s just you and me and this thing between us. We don’t know the future. How things will turn out. And I don’t know about you, but I need
some
kind of comfort. You…you comfort me. You make me feel good, when the rest of my life is…lonely and painful.”

I couldn’t bear the fragility in her voice, the pain. I slid over so our naked hips touched, pulled her against me in a hug. The embrace turned into leaning back against the wall, and her head rested on my chest. All of my muscles tensed, part of me wanting to relax and let the tension fade, enjoy what I could while I could, but the other part of me was too aware of who it was I was in bed with, what we had just done together, and how it could possibly destroy me, ruin me, ruin everything.
 

She shuddered then, as I held her. I felt the tension in her body, matching mine. But she shivered, trembled, and then began to cry. Not sob, not gasp or weep, just to softly, quietly cry, shoulders shaking, sniffling. I sensed a lifetime of complexity in her quiet tears. I didn’t dare ask what it was that made her cry so, with such isolated, self-contained agony. It wasn’t just us, this guilt-riddled tryst of ours.
 

I held her and she cried,
sotto voce
, for a long, long time. I felt her still, felt her breathing slow and even out. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to. I wanted to close my eyes and forget everything. There was no trace of the gin left in me, having been burned away. But I held her, unable to let go of the tension within me.