“I know.” His thumb finds that spot, pressing and circling, and his next thrust hits so deep I see stars. “Let go for me. I want to feel all of you.”
Those final words destroy me, my body clenching around him as pleasure rips through me in a cascading, devastating wave. The electricity races with it—silver lightning bursting from every inch of my skin in jagged, wild arcs that light him up like a supernova.
For one searing second, it’s like our nervous systems are connected. I’m the lightning flooding his veins, the warmth rushing through his body, and then he’s burying himself deep with a groan he barely muffles against my shoulder. His hips jerk with each pulse of his release, electricity arcing between us in waves, his body trembling with each new jolt as his warmth flows inside me.
Eventually, the last of the lightning flickers out beneath his skin, fading from his veins like dying embers. He collapses against me, and we stay like that until the tremors fade and the silver light dies, and all that’s left is skin against skin and the sound of two people trying to remember how to breathe.
Then, there’s only water lapping against the hull, wood creaking, and wind whipping across the sails.
“You’re insane,” I murmur in his ear. “You literally asked me to electrocute you.”
“I asked you to make me feel alive.” He pulls back enough to look at me, and his expression makes my chest ache—an unguarded, cracked-open vulnerability I almost never see. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Electrocution kills you.” His thumb traces my cheekbone, featherlight. “And trust me—that was the opposite of dying.”
I want to make a joke about how he’s being dramatic, or about how we scorched the deck and everyone’s going to see the burn marks in the morning and ask questions we absolutely cannot answer.
But his eyes are going soft at the edges, and I lose about forty IQ points and the ability to form complete sentences.
“We should move before someone comes up,” he says.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
I laugh, and it comes out shaky and breathless. “We scorched the deck.”
He glances down at where the wood is blackened in a rough outline of our bodies, my electricity carved through in charred, crackling webs.
“I’ll sand it down before sunrise,” he says.
“You will not.”
“Would you prefer I tell them it was a lightning strike?”
“On a clear night?”
His mouth twitches, just barely. “Stranger things have happened on this boat.”
He has a point. Depressingly so.
Eventually, we untangle ourselves, straightening our clothes and trying to look like we weren’t doing exactly what we were doing. My legs are shaky as he helps me to my feet, and I’mpretty sure my hair is a disaster, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the loose, satisfied feeling in my limbs and the guilt and fear fading to a distant hum.
The stars twinkle as they swirl around the sky, rearranging themselves into different constellations.
And for the first time since we fled Blaze Academy, the peace in my heart is real.
11
EVIE
The central roombelow deck is too small for two people who can’t look at each other.
It’s approximately eight feet by six feet of usable floor space, minus the crates of supplies along the port wall that are serving as makeshift chairs and the water barrels tucked against the starboard side. That leaves roughly thirty-two square feet for two people, one of whom takes up significantly more space than average due to being six-foot-two and composed of muscle, steel, and emotional unavailability.
Kieran sets out two portions of fish on the cleanest surfaces he can find, arranges the shellfish beside them, and uses his fire to cook it all.