Page 49 of Chaos

“Sad.”

“Sure, but that’s”—he hisses when I lift my leg higher and grind into him—“what your hair smells like.”

A very unexpected bubble of laughter spills out of me that he’s been leading us there this whole time. “I’ll take dead animals over that cellar.”

When did I last laugh? Or feel like nothing mattered but his body and mine? I suck on his earlobe.

“Not dead animals. Fur coat smell. Clean mammal hair,” he whispers, tipping my face up to meet his. “And Sunshine, Frankie.”

When I put my hands on his chest and push, he lets me roll him onto his back and climb on top of him. “I haven’t felt like Sunshine Frankie in a while.”

But I did feel a glimmer just then.

“We’ll get her back,” he says confidently.

“I don’t know.” I scope out my body, my fingers clenching on his shirt-covered chest. “I feel hateful. And mad. So mad. The anger is always there, lurking under the surface.”

“Good. You should be mad.”

I lean down, nervous at how this will feel, press my lips to his.

He holds himself still, letting me experiment, but breathing hard, like it’s taking effort. He’s finding light and gentleness for me, and I need it, but I also need his darkness.And more than anything, I need him to chase Scraggle and Ben out of my head.

When I touch my tongue to the seam between Yorke’s lips, he opens for me with a low groan.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I slide my hands up his abdomen, his skin, silky soft and hot, stretched taut over rigid muscles. I graze his nipple.

Air rushes out of him.

I roll my hips over him, peel his sweats down from the waistband. “You still want me, don’t you?”

“Always.” There’s a heavy smack as his girth leaves the top of his pants and thwacks into his abs.

I remember distinctly Jee having a pregnancy scare and saying sex doesn’t hurt babies. I cling to that. This right here, can be just about Yorke and me, about us.

“I spent a month in hell, and now all I want is you inside me.” Nerves flutter through my belly as I graze my unbroken nails over his skin, sit up and rip the shirt I stole from him over my head, drag Yorke’s hands up and place them over my breasts, and shudder at the relief.

“Scraggle can’t be the last person to touch my breasts.”

Anger flashes in Yorke’s eyes.

That’s what I want—to feel like us again, really, truly us, even if that’s angry. It’s fine to be angry, if that’s what he feels, at me, everyone else, too, fine. Because I’m mad too, I’m so mad it burns in my blood, and that madness wants the dark, heavy breathing, slapping skin, his body hard inside mine chasing everything else away.

We can’t be happy together right now, but we can be mad together.

His thumbs graze in to tug at my nipples, and the skin all along my body reacts. It feels so good, my neck arches, my hair falling down my back to tickle my bare skin in the cold air.

Cold air like the cellar.

My skin rises in goosebumps.

He does that thing to my nipples again, and a raw, broken groan rips out of me, chasing away my thoughts.

“More,” I whisper, wanting it harder so the thoughts can’t come back. I wrap my hands around the silken girth of him. So hard.

He drags me closer, gets a nipple in his mouth, teeth and tongue, and I need him. I need him inside me. Breathless, I shift to line our bodies up.

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