Page 106 of Shadows of Stardust

“Fuck,” Roslyn curses, and I know I’ve found a new way to make her tremble, a new way to make sure she gets just what she needs.

“I want to feel you,” I tell her, leaning down so I can kiss up her neck, whisper the words into the soft curve of her jaw. “Let me feel you, Roslyn.”

I need it like I need my next breath. To feel the power of her release, to know I gave it to her. Hips tight to hers, I make it my singular purpose in life to last until she gets there.

The fates must be looking kindly on me tonight, because only a few short minutes later she’s tensing beneath me, arms tightening and belly clenching as her breath grows more ragged and her cries more urgent.

And when she comes—a low scream wrenched from her throat, face buried in my neck—I’m lost.

I spill into her with a shout, and through each endless spasm of my orgasm, her name is the sweetest nectar on my lips. A blessing and a benediction and a plea all in one.

Roslyn, Roslyn, Roslyn.

I say it like a vow into the hollow of her throat. Whisper it like a secret to the tender skin just beneath her ear. Trace it into the curve of her breast with my tongue and mold it to her lips with a kiss. When words fail, I keep it just to myself as I rest my forehead to her collarbone.

And it’s there, in the last throes of that pleasure, that a small, quiet voice makes itself known in my mind.

It’s a voice that questions how any of this is possible, how it can be that pleasure and tenderness and a connection like this can even exist.

How did I find her here, of all places? When my life has taken me from one corner of the sector to the other, when I’ve been alone for so very long, how many stars aligned to bring us together?

And, maybe more than anything, it’s a voice that wonders quietly, desperately, how I’ll be able to walk away from her when all of this ends.

29

Roslyn

Zan collapses into me, and I never really thought I had such a thing for big, muscled dudes, but there’s something so fucking delicious about his weight pressing down on top of me. The bulk of him, the comfort of being anchored right here with him, draws a long, satisfied sigh from my chest. I wrap my arms around him, squeeze my thighs tighter where they rest on his hips, and his rumble of satisfaction vibrates all the way through me.

We stay that way for a long time. Hearts beating in time, breath slowly returning to normal, bathed in moonlight and boneless with pleasure and exhaustion.

Zan has his elbows resting on either side of me, keeping himself from crushing me completely, but I don’t think I’d mind if he did. He could be my blanket any time, and I’d be just as deliriously comfortable as I am right now.

When he shifts on top of me like he’s about to get up, I grumble a protest, but he just presses a kiss to the middle of my forehead.

“Stay here,” Zan rumbles, and I don’t have any spare brain cells left to argue as he rolls out of bed and disappears into the bathroom.

When he returns, he’s got a damp washcloth in his hand, and goes immediately to work cleaning me up.

I should probably be more embarrassed.

I’ve never really been one to linger after sex, to cuddle, to stick around and do the whole cute and sappy bonding thing.

Mostly because the vast, vast majority of my sexual encounters have been hookups or short-lived flings. And somewhere in the back of my brain a little voice pipes up to remind me that’s exactly what this is, too.

Casual. A fling.

Not the kind of thing where I should let him clean his come off me while I lay here languid and satisfied, so totally blissed out that I couldn’t conjure all my walls and layers of protection even if I wanted to.

But that’s exactly what I do. I melt into the pillows and let Zan clean me. I don’t try to stop him or offer any protest at all.

When the edge of the cloth brushes over my inner thigh, though, I gasp, surprised at the small sting.

A rough, disgruntled noise lodges in the back of Zan’s throat. “I hurt you. My skin, it’s too rough. I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m fine,” I assure him, leaning up on my elbows. My breath catches when I find him wedged in between my thighs, trailing his fingertips over the pink, slightly tender skin there.

“Ros,” he grumbles. “Look at you. Don’t tell me—”

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