Page 48 of The Sound Between Us

I lift her and she wraps her legs around me, tangling us into this desperate knot of what could be and probably shouldn’t, and I carry her to the bed. She weighs nothing and everything all at once.

“I haven’t...” she starts as I drop her gently onto white sheets, but then stops. Her voice cracks.

“Haven’t what?” Gentler now.

“It’s been a while. Since I... with anyone.”

Heat carves deep in my chest. Not pity, not relief, just possession, guttural and selfish and mine.

“We can go slow.”

“I don’t want slow.” Breathless, urgent. “I want you.”

I kiss her then. With everything I have. The only thing I’ll ever get to say.

Every place I touch her feels revelatory. She moves carefully—arched neck, gasping breath, fingers curled in the sheets, holding on for dear life.

When I take her jeans off, she kicks them away, desperate to be rid of them. When she helps with mine, her fingers skim my cock and I have to grit my teeth to stop from coming undone.

“Seren...”

“Please.” It’s wrecking me.

I sink down between her thighs, the only place in the world I want to be, and worship her until she’s trembling, undone, whispering my name. A broken hymn. And when she falls apart beneath me, it’s not pretty—it’s glorious.

“Harry, I need…” Her head drops to the side, gasped breath ragged between us.

“I know.” I press kisses up her body, hands slow now. Reverent. “I know.”

I fumble a condom from my wallet, and when she watches me roll it on with those wide, ruinous eyes, I nearly lose it.

“You sure?” One last out.

Instead of answering, she pulls me down and kisses me. The answer’s obvious.

And when I finally push into her, we both gasp.

She’s so fucking tight, so hot and real and here, and I have to pause to breathe, to not fall apart instantly.

I look down at her—wild hair fanned across the pillow, flushed skin, lips swollen—and think: this is it. This is the point of no return; the place I was always heading.

And if I’m going to ruin anything, my heart, her quiet life, the very last scraps of who I used to be, I want it to be for this. For her.

“Okay?” Throat raw, heart louder than it should be.

“More than okay.” The way her hips roll against mine nearly undoes me all over again.

We find a rhythm, tentative at first, slow and curious and new. Learning each other through movement, not words, making a language all our own. Her legs lock around my waist and she pulls me deeper, and I swear the stars rearrange themselves just for us.

“Fuck, Seren. You feel... you feel—” I don’t finish because she kisses me hard enough to drown the rest of it, and her nails carve crescents into my shoulders, trying to tether me to the earth.

We lose ourselves in it; each thrust a gasp, each flicker of skin against skin a kind of worship. When she falls apart again, it’s with a shuddering cry, her body arching, clutching me so tight I forget who I am. And I follow, helpless, wrecked, groaning her name.

Afterwards, we collapse into the hush. Breathing hard; limbs tangled. Her head pillowed against my chest. We didn’t just burn down the whole goddamn room.

The sky outside is softening—London rising in gold and grey—and the sheets are a mess of heat and skin and afterglow.

And then comes the come-down.