My eyes flutter open, and I stir.
I stir awake from a deep slumber, but I see it’s dark outside. A hand caresses the flat of my stomach, and I tilt my head up to see Vincent watching me.
He’s lying on his side, and I’m cocooned in his arms.
I can’t remember us going to bed. I can’t remember falling asleep either.
I hate crying myself to sleep.
He eases himself up onto his elbow and looks at me. He’s taken off his shirt, and there’s a bandage going around his waist.
“Oh my God…” I gasp when I see it.
He looks down at himself and shakes his head. “It looks worse than it feels. I’m wearing it for Marguerite’s benefit. She insisted. It’ll be gone by morning.” He gives me a little smile.
“Did you break something when we fell?”
“Maybe.”
“We should go to the hospital.”
He reaches for my face. “Bellezza, I don’t do hospitals. I hate them, and I avoid them if I can. My philosophy is, if I can move, then I can move. I’m fine. Stupid question, but I’m gonna ask it all the same. Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “No… I don’t think so, Vincent.”
“Talk to me, baby.”
“No. You shouldn’t be… you shouldn’t be next to me.” He knows my secrets now.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else than next to you,” he says, stroking the edge of my jaw.
“Even after what—” He doesn’t let me finish. He moves forward and kisses me.
He kisses me in such a sensual way that it fades the worries from my mind, just like always and so much more in this moment.
I kiss him back as he holds me.
“We’re those people from the coffee shop again, Ava. Baby…none of the things that happened today happened. We’re in bed, and we’re that couple. That’s what this is. We don’t need to be at The Dark Odyssey to live the fantasy. We’re here. Will you come with me?” He speaks against my lips, and my soul vibrates with the luxuriated sensation of him.
I imagine it. In that version of us, I’m happy and he’s holding me. We’re here, and I couldn’t love him any more than I do right now.
Love… yes. I do. I truly do love him. I fell hard and sure for him. Right now it’s the thing that’s keeping me alive.
“Yes…” I whisper.
“What should we do? What to do you want me to do, Bellezza?” he asks.
I pull back slightly and run my fingers over his jaw, holding his gaze so I don’t break the fantasy and slip back into the darkness of the real world.
“Tell me, baby. I see it in your eyes.”
“Make love to me, Vincent.”
“Make love? Now, that’s another fantasy I have, Ava… where you give me your heart and soul. Is that what you want?”
“You have them, Vincent. You have me. My heart, body, and soul are all yours.”
As he comes to my lips once more, I melt. I dissolve and soften at the feel of his hard lips on mine.
His mouth on mine speaks to me without words that we were so much more than what I thought we were, and I’m pulled into the fantasy of those two people who met at the coffee shop.
He kisses away my fears and nightmares. All of it goes, including my grief. It’s just like magic. Soothing, to pacify the pain. The more he touches me, the more it fades, and soon it’s gone completely from my mind.
I feel his touch and his lips, and that is all that exists in my world. Him.
I’m swept away as the kiss intensifies, becoming brazen. The kind that holds nothing back. It fills me with that wild need for him again. Wild need mixed with that transcendental desire for each other. We tear at each other’s clothes until we’re both naked, his lips barely leaving mine.
When passion takes us, it sets my soul on fire and my body comes alive with the energy that pulses from it.
Each touch, each kiss, each whisper of desire sings through my soul and seals me to him.
When his ruthless cock plunges into me, it strips away everything but my need for him, possessing me so I know he’s taking the last things I have left. Heart and soul.
I already gave him my body, and as I give it to him again, I hope he knows what he means to me. I tried so hard not to fall for him, and I couldn’t stop. Now that I’m so wounded, I need his touch to make me whole. To fix me.
Fix me….
The thought brings the image of that girl who was locked away and pushes through the darkness. My dark knight is light in the darkness, so dark that darkness fears him. He cracks away the shadows surrounding me and her.
And then it happens. Something light drifts in. At first it drifts, then it flows. It’s hope, hope that I grab by the reins and allow to take me away from the shadows the monsters created.
We move together as one molded by passion’s call to make love.
Then, together, we surrender, and I feel the culmination of ultimate pleasure claim me and heal me. A million glowing stars swirl through me all at once, and love flows through me like liquid fire.
Love I never expected to feel with anyone. Love I never dreamt of feeling with anyone.
I could only feel like this with him. I could only give myself to him.
Only he could break down the barriers I set up, because only he could see how broken I was.
As our breathing stills, he holds me, and I feel loved. I feel it all around me, and I know he feels it too.
He looks at me with it but dips his head, almost avoiding my gaze.
“Please… look at me,” I plead.
He does, and his eyes search mine. “I….” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. I felt the rest of the words.
I felt the affection in my heart, and I understand why he can’t finish.
But I’ll absorb the warmth he gives me as he holds me.
For just a little longer, I stay in the fantasy and imagine us as those people.
I know we aren’t, and I know I have to leave this world we created entirely.
I’ll hold on for as long as I can though. I don’t want to leave just yet.