Heart Song Anthology by Carolyn Faulkner (summer reads txt) 📗

“I’m surprised your pride will allow you to admit that,” he teased.

“I’ll deal with the pain in admitting defeat. You earned the privilege.”

Hugging her closer into his solid chest, he reached for the shampoo, an oil-based bottle with essential oils made for relaxation. Almost as soon as he squirted some onto his hands and began lathering them against her skull, she tasted the salt of tears mingling with the splash of the scented water.

Asher didn’t notice until her shoulders bobbed, then responded tactlessly, “You’re crying.”

“Only a little,” she said, sniffling. “I know I am different, Asher. I just feel,” she broke off.

“Lost,” he supplied gently, rinsing his hands, he dunked a cup and started to gingerly thread his fingers through her sudsy hair, pouring small streams of water against her scalp and watching the bubbles wash away.

“Well, yeah. I never expected to have to run for my life, but I want you to know that I don’t regret it. I need you to know that you were worth all of it and I wouldn’t have a life at all if it wasn’t for you.”

Discarding the cup, he swept his arms around her again and pulled her tightly against him, nuzzling her neck with his prickly chin until his lips found her soft flesh. “You are my whole world Coraline Santos. That’s what I need you to know. No matter how much we change or how shitty our circumstances become, how I feel about you will never change.”

She sniffled as he kissed her shoulder, then her neck, then her cheek, and finally, her lips. Her toes curled as the softness of his mouth engulfed hers. His rough hands, not a hitman’s hands, but the hands of a laborer, caressed her back. She, too, couldn’t imagine her love for him ever fading; it only seemed to grow deeper with each passing day.

“I think I’m cooled down,” she whispered against his mouth.

The water splashed as he stood with her still gripped in his arms. She nearly slipped on the slippery tub, but he caught her and assisted by lifting her into his arms and placing her onto the sink counter before she could even blink. An impressive display of body mechanics.

She sat there against the mirror, dripping, as he fetched the towel and began dabbing her dry, sliding the satin-soft material over her bare skin. He was so gentle with her, as if she might shatter, when all she wanted was for him to be rough. To take. To claim.

He must have registered the need in her eyes, for he stepped between her parted legs and claimed her mouth with the intensity she had been hoping he would. She moaned, especially as his fingers found her bare hip and gripped her firmly. His. She was his.

His shaft settled between her heated thighs, throbbing against her abdomen. She spread herself wider to him, sliding closer in an invitation he couldn’t refuse. He only needed to find that perfect spot to fully immerse himself because she was sopping wet and ready for him.

With one firm thrust, his hardness met her soft center, and she cried out. For a few hard pumps of his hips, he enjoyed her screams of pleasure, and enjoyed the feeling of that barrier battering his cock as he pushed as deep as her inner cavern would allow.

She bounced with each violent thrust of his shaft inside her. “God,” she said breathlessly, digging her nails into his shoulder and scratching long lines through his flesh. Her head fell back against the mirror, her whole body configuring to help him go deeper. “Harder.”

“I thought I told you, you aren’t the one giving orders,” he growled, yet still obliged her and her hard breathing became more shrill, a small squeal escaping through her clenched teeth at the harshness of her pleasure.

Finally, she had bounced too far out of reach and he had to manhandle her thighs with his fingers gripping hard and firm to reposition her onto his cock. He wasn’t going fast enough, or hard enough, and he finally grunted his frustration. He needed all of her, and he needed it all now.

Scooping his hands beneath her bare ass, he lifted her into his arms, then laid her onto the cold tile floor. With the candles still flickering against the water, he seemed to glow all around her, a shadow moving against the light.

“Keep moaning like that,” he ordered as if she had any other choice. The noises she made were completely involuntary.

His broad hand trapped her neck, his thumb stroking her chin as he held her steady in the most dominating of positions. She struck back, moving her hips to smack against his again, and again, and again, until she felt him pulse deep inside her. He froze, his hard, trembling cock pressed as deep inside her as it would go, as it released its sweet warmth inside her.

His head fell forward as if his neck no longer had the energy to hold it up as he muttered, “Fuck.”

Fuck indeed.

Cora felt downright dehydrated despite the humidity all around them. Her body felt like mush, her muscles tingling with exertion so fiercely that all she could do was lay there, still trapped beneath him.

He, too, felt relaxed for the first time in months, and he knew he would never stop loving her. He would never stop loving what he could do to her and she to him. He would never stop, but in order to love her forever, he must attend a million funerals of who she once was. She would change into a new person, and mold herself to multiple circumstances, all the way through their lives together. She would be a different person in many ways, and the person she couldn’t be anymore because of trauma, or exhaustion, or growth would fade.

To love her forever was to love every version of who she currently was and would become.

He had wanted her to regain that spark he had fallen