Page 117 of Flat Out
Not my burden alone. Not my secret, my shame. Ours.
And for the first time since I was told what my body couldn’t do, I didn’t feel broken. I felt whole.
I rolled onto my stomach, resting my chin on my hand. Callum just gawked at me like I was the only thing in his universe. The weight in my chest had lifted just enough to letsomething mischievous slip through. This moment was precious and fragile, but I needed to lighten it, because that was how I survived.
“Plan, hmm? Then we’d better call your mum. She’s probably already chosen the church.”
Malina really was planning the wedding, and if I had been any other woman, it would have scared me off. But Callum and I belonged together. We’d had to fight this connection, then hide it, then rise from the ashes. And I knew, without a doubt, that if we could survive what we already had, the rest of the world never stood a chance.
At his frown, I grinned. My first real smile in days, and God, it felt strange and wonderful on my face. “Remember? She told you to marry that French girl someday. Don’t let her down.”
Oh mon Dieu, the look on him. The sound of his laugh was gravelly and sudden, so fucking sexy and delicious. Different from the broken hysteria we’d shared the night before. This was raw, cathartic, alive. Hope wrapped in sound. I thought my heart might split open watching him fall apart in front of me from somethingIgave him. Love, not pain. Joy, not despair.
“Christ, woman,” he groaned, dragging me across the bed until I was flush against him, his accent gone rough and thick in that way I loved so much. The way it did when he was losing his grip. “You’re going to kill me one day.”
The warmth bubbling in me spilled over. I giggled, soft and unrestrained, and his mouth devoured it like he’d been waiting his whole life for that exact sound. My giggle broke apart into a gasp, and he just kissed me like his life depended on it.
“Do you have any idea what that sound does to me?” he breathed, his words a confession against my lips. “You could burn me alive with it, and I’d thank you.”
Heat licked down my spine, settling low in my belly. I smiled wickedly, feeling it in every inch of me. But my brain decided todo that thing where it couldn’t decide which language to pick. “Mmm. Pain and poetry. C’est… comment dit…hot as fuck?”
He laughed again, breaking our kiss, his forehead dropping against mine. His chest shook, and I felt giddy with it, like I’d stolen the sun back for him. It was so… carefree, and boyish, and that fucking grin of his where that goddamn dimple appeared… fuck, it had me sighing like a boy-crazed teenager.
“Jesus, Aurélie,” he managed through his laughter. “That is not how that phrase works.”
“Pfft, I beg to differ. It works on you,” I shot back, smirk curling my lips, smug as sin. My eyes dragged over him, the way his hair was halfway between waves and curls, messy from sleep and the longest I’d seen it, but God, was it perfect on him. And the way he’d trimmed his facial hair—ugh, I suddenly wanted that all over me, marking me, branding me, claiming me.
Callum Fraser was all man, walking sex and everything I could ever want.
The sheet was bunched around his hips, and in the low light, his abs were a work of art, a single vein disappearing beneath the fabric.
Before he could recover, I tilted my head and whispered the truth anyway. “Non. Your weak spot, remember? Tu es mon point faible.”You are my weak spot.
Morel had implied it was a bad thing, but it was far from. Callumwasmy weakness, but in the sense that he was the only person I’d die for. The only one I’d kill for, the only one I’d walk to the edges of the earth just to drag him back to me.
Because love didn’t make you weak. Its strength forged in the fiery depths of devotion, the kind that remade ruin into resurrection. Love would always pick the goddamn locks and show up even in the worst of times, would help the other person stand when they could barely support themselves, and took every broken piece as if it were both whole and holy.
And just like that, his laughter broke. I felt the shift in him instantly, like his whole body forgot how to breathe. His grip in my hair turned desperate, reverent. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, his voice cracking around the edges. “You really are gonna undo me.”
My heart squeezed so violently it hurt. I pressed my lips to his, soft but sure. “I already have.” The dark pull in his endless, impossibly blue eyes begged me to wreck him further, so I did. “Besides… you like it. Admit, mon amour—” I pitched my voice into a butchered Scottish accent, because the French in me would never be dimmed, “—it’s bloody romantic.”
The sound he made—fuck, it was torn straight from his soul. A groan, a laugh, a plea all in one. His hand dragged behind my knee, hitching my leg over his hip until I felt the hot, throbbing press of his cock against me.
“God, you’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he growled into my mouth, kissing me hungrily, possessively, as if swallowing every last bit of me.
I kissed him back slowly, sinfully, tasting him with my tongue until I pulled back just enough to breathe.
“No,” I purred. “I’m trying to resurrect you.”
The way he froze. The way his eyes flew wide and his entire body reacted. I felt it like a live wire under my palms. His cock pulsed hot against me, his breath stuttered, and I realized exactly what I’d done. That word—resurrect—struck him deep, brutal and holy, the way it had struck me yesterday when he’d held me together.
“Baby,” he rasped, his hips bucking helplessly against mine, “you can’t just fucking say things like that.”
“Oh, but I can,” I said quietly, smug and breathless. I caught his bottom lip between my teeth, biting before letting it go. His groan rumbled through me, and I shivered with it. My gaze locked on his, tender and filthy at once. “Maybe next time, I’llmake you beg for your resurrection. You always rise so perfectly for me, mon amour.”
Men had always tried to take my choice from me. Seen me as an object to play with, to touch, to use. Even yesterday. The memory scraped like glass against my ribs. But here, now, with him, I could erase it. What I needed was to feel him claim me in the only way that mattered: to know that no matter how many pieces the world broke me into, he would always put me back together.
And then I moved. I rolled, straddling him, reclaiming my power over him. My hair fell in a wild curtain around us, cocooning us in shadow as my hips ground down slow, deliberate, claiming. His strangled laugh told me everything. I had him. I was in complete control.
