Her breathing erratic, she pushes into me, her backside delivering satisfying friction. “We’re right in view⁠—”

“To whom? The bored agents who lost interest in us after the first ten minutes. To those dull fucks below us? We’re just a couple watching the sky.” My grip tightens over her hands to hold her in place, my body caged around hers. “They can’t hear the filthy things I’m whispering to you, or feel how your body responds to them.”

“Kallum, stop.” Her panic is tangible as she looks down.

Towering over her, I collar her throat from behind and force her head back as I drop my lips against her ear, lowering my tone to a lethal decibel. “There are no safe words between us. You want this to stop, you know how to make it stop.”

Her swallow pulses enticingly against my palm, her heart taking flight.

“Slow your breathing,” I instruct as I loosen my hold. Gently, I stroke her throat, taming the wild creature in my grasp. “That’s it. Good girl. You know with one command, you can enrapture me or end me. You felt it in the room as you watched me come undone and lose my goddamn mind at the sight of you riding your fingers, coming so pretty for me as your eyes held me captive, and I was dying as I came so fucking hard for you, Halen. That’s the power you possess over me.”

She doesn’t have to own it. We both know she can annihilate me right this instant, and I’d praise her while she delivered her lovely damnation.

Her body relaxes into mine, her breathing deep and slow as I tenderly trace her neck before I remove her hairband, loving the way the soft layers fall over her shoulder. “Fuck, at that moment, I would have traded what’s left of my black soul for just a taste of your sweet, sweet pussy.” My cock throbs at the prospect. I spear my fingers into her hair and pull her head back. “Tell me how wet you are.”

A reflexive tremble grips her muscles. “Soaking my thighs,” she says, shamelessly torturing me.

A guttural sound works free from deep within my chest, and I fasten my eyes closed as I release her and press my lips to the top of her head. The air has no temperature. There are no scents. The sounds of the party have faded away. Even the meteoroids in space have ceased their course.

She’s all that I sense.

“You consume my fucking cells, Halen. I’m always touching you, always inside you. I know you feel me.” I slide my fingers through hers on the railing. “Admit it.”

“Yes,” she breathes, her voice scarcely carrying over the cello. “I always feel you.”

Like a fiend, approval inflates my ego. “It’s our own unique chemistry. Just like quantum particles whose fates are intertwined, we were created together during the same event. We’re entangled, our properties forever linked wherever we are. Opposites that continuously communicate across time and space.”

She shakes her head in silent rebuttal, yet I know she understands every word, believes every word. It’s her logic that wants to deny our connection, because it’s inexplicable.

So what I’m about to do to her will blow her damn mind.

My voice drops to a low rumble. “Don’t remove your hands from this rail.”

She clings to the safety of the bar, her body tense, as I slip one hand away. I graze my palm up her arm, over the stitches, coasting higher until I’m positioned between her shoulder blades where I unhook the bra closure.

She gifts me an involuntary flinch. “Doing your bad-boy moniker justice,” she teases, but I can hear the breathy uncertainty in her voice.

“Oh, I’m absolutely about to do it justice, sweetness.” I seal my words in a threat as I grind the length of my unrestrained erection along her ass. “You want me to shatter you, then I’ll shatter you from the inside out.”

I push the bra straps down her shoulders, allowing the garment to slip to her abdomen, her breasts free to experience the satiny sensation of her top. Like a masochist, to torture myself further, I unfasten the button right below the low neckline, granting myself a sexy, teasing view of her breasts. The temptation to capture her peaked nipples between my fingers is a hot demand in my groin, but I return my hand to hers.

“While touch is addictive, the mind is what makes the sensation real.” My claim is backed by the cool caress of night, the haunting notes of the cello. “An orgasm is more cognitive than physical, but my little Halen knows this,” I whisper in her ear. “When the mind and body are in tune, an energy orgasm can clang the fuck out of that tuning fork, and there are no two people on this planet more aligned than us.”

Recovering her memory is only one facet of her awakening.

Halen doesn’t just have to face her fear, she has to look into the eyes of her monster and surrender. Emergence of our darkest aspect is not a sickness. It’s not psychopathy.

It’s providence.

To deny this part of ourself is contra naturam—a sin against our very nature.

And Halen’s denial will damn us both.

“Don’t take your eyes off the sky,” I command, the ache in my voice guttural and raw. “Watch those flickers of light and know their beauty could never compare to yours, Halen. Not for me. There is nothing in this world or the next that will ever rival you. I knew that the very first time I saw you, with the setting sun your backdrop to illuminate you like a goddess. You owned the elements. You owned me.”

Her breathing shallows even as her pulse screams in her veins, beating wildly as I press my lips to the throbbing point in her neck.

“You’re so fucking beautiful in every light,” I say, my voice thick with arousal, “yet even more striking in your shadows, where you think you’re safely hidden. You should know by now that you can’t hide from me. Everything you say and do twists me, makes me a feral heathen. You’re so fucking perfect the way you shamelessly ride my hand, your needy clit seeking friction, your pussy gripping my fingers and begging for my cock. So fucking sexy when you give yourself over to the frenzy, you make me a madman who wants to watch you come on my fingers and fuck you at the same time.”

The backs of her thighs rest along mine, and I jam my foot between her feet to unlock her knees and splay her legs wide.

Unprepared, she tips forward past the handrail. “Jesus, Kallum.” A muttered curse falls free as her gaze snaps to the ground far below. As she pushes back against my chest, I seal my hands tighter over hers on the rail, my bruised knuckles pulsing in painful time to the quickening of her heart.

“I swear, I won’t let you fall.” I nuzzle her hair, deliriously drunk on her fear. “But I won’t stop until I discover what scares you, sweetness.”

Her resulting shiver ricochets through me, and I band my body tight around hers. Every soft curve of her figure aligns with my unyielding form to tear at my control.

“Every night, I taste you on my tongue,” I whisper over her ear, “becoming a ravenous beast as I’m torn awake, desperate for a chance to bury my face between your thighs and lap your cunt.” My cock jumps as she arches her back and rocks into me, her impulse overriding her anxiety. “And I know you feel me. I know the mark on your thigh is fire in the middle of the night when you stir awake to the hollow ache between your thighs. Because I feel you. I feel your fingers, shaky, as they explore over your trembling belly to touch yourself.”

I greedily meet the slight roll of her hips with my own, catching the flames of her fire as she burns hotter, eliciting an erotic moan that slides beneath my flesh at the tantalizing friction.

She’s trying not to move, to keep from drawing attention, yet her body demands the abrasive caress of her panties over her clit, her thighs quivering with need to clench closed and offset the ache.

“Do you know how many times I’ve imagined you wrapped around me, what you’d feel like as I buried myself deep inside you?” I say with a dark groan. “God, you have no idea how I’ve tried to satisfy my need for you, thinking the next moment we were alone, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from taking you. All the times I had to restrain myself from pinning you down and tearing your panties off, thrusting my cock inside you at least one fucking time just to get a taste of relief.”