Page 131 of The Truth About Love

And yet, how could I live with the decision if I let him go?

I couldn’t.

It’s not possible.

There is only Auden, there has only ever been Auden, and without him, I am nothing.

I don’t think as I sprint out the front door and down the stairwell. I’m in such a state, panting and sobbing and aching for Auden, that I almost trip over him sitting on the bottom step.

He’s hunched over, his head in his hands. His pain is palpable. I can feel it everywhere. It’s so powerful, I can almost see it. Like swirling wisps of black smoke.

I lay my hand on his shoulder and with just that simple touch, air fills my lungs once more.

His eyes snap to mine, devastated.

“Yes,” I whisper.

He stands, shooting up so fast that I instinctively move backwards, going up a step. It puts us at eyelevel.

I reach for his cheeks, holding them between my trembling hands.

“Yes, I’ll be yours. I’ll always be yours.”

The words have hardly left my mouth before he’s seizing my lips in a bruising kiss. It’s frenzied. Almost feral.

Our animal instincts take over as he tears at my shorts, ripping them clean off my body. His cock is out before I can blink. It’s big, so big, and pointed straight at me.How did I forget how beautiful he is?

He asks with pleading eyes if I’m okay with what’s about to happen. It’s so unnecessary that I almost laugh. I wouldn’t be able to deny him if my life was about to end.

At my nod, he hooks my leg around his waist and buries himself inside me.

And just like that, I can breathe again.

We gasp into each other’s mouths as we finally become one again. I can’t believe I went two years without this, without the touch of his hands and the love of his lips.

“Mine,” he growls, his thrusts hard and rough. It doesn’t hurt though. It could never hurt. “You’re fucking mine.”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I don’t know if I say it out loud. I’m too lost in the feel of him and the sounds of our moans as they echo through the barren walls of the stairwell.

I bury my face in his neck and wrap my arms around him, clinging to him as tightly as I can manage. Tears slip down my cheeks and meet with the sweat forming on his skin.

“Please don’t leave me,” I beg. “Please don’t ever leave me again.”

He stops. The hold he has on my thigh grows impossibly tighter as he lifts me, allowing me to wrap my other leg around his waist. I gasp at the deepness of the new position.

He pins me to the wall to support us.

“Look at me,” he says, my face still hiding in the space between his chin and shoulder blade.

Slowly, I raise my head and meet his sparkling eyes. The look in his eyes is hot enough to burn me, yet soft enough to ease the lingering ache in my heart.

He strokes his thumb across my cheek, brushing away a tear.

“There is nothing that could take me away from you again.Nothing.It’s me and you now.”

I shudder at his words.

---