I felt fulfillment, an answer to that other night when I felt hollow. As dumb as it might have seemed, I felt whole. I felt filled and fulfilled. I was not just a body, I was a heart.

He squeezed into me and our breaths became shorter, the sweat between us increasing. I felt no pain at all, just an expansion, like this was how it was supposed to be. My brain wanted to think about the last time and what happened then, it wanted to compare. But somehow I was able to push those thoughts to the very back and stripped them of their power. They had their power over me for too long and though that battle was far from being over, my body won.

Dex started driving in, his hands tight on the sides of my hips and he pushed forward, each pump harder than the last, a light sheen growing on his forehead, his eyes dark with determination and totally lost in a lust I rarely saw in him.

He came at me over and over again until I was certain he was trying to nail me to the ground, and then his fingers found their way inside me as well, circling around his shaft and tracing my edges.

I leaned back into the ground, raising my hips higher. He groaned in response, his breath getting caught in his throat. He leaned forward and held my arms still above my head, as if I would try and get away, like I was some prey of his. That said, I might as well have been. With his other hand he brought me to an orgasm that rocked me from the inside out. It snuck up on me and caught me blindsided, until I was panting for breath and wondering what the hell just happened, the world spinning deliciously.

I tried to raise my head but he tightened his grip on my arms.

“You’re not done yet, not by a longshot,” he murmured.

I couldn’t protest. He was still driving deep into me, his eyes searching mine and every now and then I felt like he found what he was looking for. Though I forbade my brain from comparisons, I couldn’t help but feel this Dex was all man compared to the last time. We weren’t the same people anymore. I know I wasn’t.

I definitely hadn’t been this woman, the Perry who dug her nails into his ass and begged him to take her home again. Dex did nothing but oblige. He pounded me harder, his fingers swirling until I came again, a multi-colored torrent of sensation that swept me along, tugging at my insides, making feel things I couldn’t dare feel. I was probably crying, probably crying out, probably screaming, and none of it mattered.

And then he finally let loose. His breath thickened, his chest heaved and every single muscle in his body clenched. He wasn’t shy either. His cries echoed from the forest floor to the tree tops and disappeared somewhere where the sun was threatening to make its decline. I’d never heard one man be so vocal before and it only added to the waves of pleasure that were still rolling through me.

When the last of him was milked dry, he fell forward, careful not to crush me on his descent. There was a small moment when I was sure he’d bolt up and walk away into the forest to “think” but that never happened. Instead, he brought both elbows on either side of my shoulders and leaned forward until his nose was flush against mine, back to the same way we’d started.

He kept himself inside me still as our breathing returned to normal. His eyes closed and he whispered, “I want to feel like this for the rest of my life.”

If there was anything left inside of me to melt, it would have. My emotions were drained but still there, simmering under the surface, waiting to surprise me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The longer Dex lied on top of me, his naked body held firm against mine, pressing me into the silver blankets, the more confused I became.

Because I began to think and have thoughts again. And my brain started to analyze. And I realized what the hell we had done and where we had done it. We had almost died, were chased by a creature, then swept by a wild river, almost succumbed to hypothermia, yet we found the time to have sex?

Sensing the change in me, Dex’s eyes flew open and he stared at me intently. “What’s wrong?”

I turned my head and looked away. Our clothes were scattered around us, drying in the sun. “Nothing’s wrong.”

A chill began to spread on my body and I tried to move out from underneath him.

His nostrils flared. “Where are you going?”

He pressed down on me hard but I was already rolling out of the way.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, getting to my knees, painfully aware I was naked and in broad daylight. “There’s nowhere to go.”

I quickly snatched up one of the space blankets from the ground and wrapped myself in it before the chills had the chance to set in. I grabbed another loose one and handed it to Dex who was on his knees.

“Here,” I told him, placing it in his hands. I walked past him and examined our clothes. They were all still wet, though drying faster than I had thought. “This might take a while.”

“Perry,” he said, sounding confused.

I bit my lip and looked behind me. He was still holding the blanket and it was doing nothing to hide the erection that was barely fading.

“Cover up,” I told him quickly, looking away. “You’ll freeze. And I want to use the blankets underneath you. Maybe if we lay our clothes out on them, they’ll dry faster.”

“Perry, let’s talk about this…”

My mouth twisted. “Talk about what?”

Dex raised his brows and slowly got to his feet. Still naked.

“We just had sex.”

I tightened the blanket around my shoulders. “I am aware of that.”

His eyes grew soft. “That didn’t mean anything to you?”

I jerked my chin into my neck, blinking hard. “Um.”

“Because it meant something to me,” he said, coming forward. His voice quivered slightly. “It meant too much to me.”

His words tore me up inside. I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t even know what it meant to me. I didn’t even have time to think about it. I didn’t want him to think that just because we had sex, that all was forgiven between us. I didn’t want him to think that he “won,” or he had me or that it was fine that he left me broken before.

He placed his hand on my cheek and brought his face close. “I’d give anything to know what you’re thinking right now.”

I looked down, feeling the warmth from his lips. I closed my eyes and took in a breath for strength, then moved away from his hand.

“I think we need to start figuring out what to do next.”

“Between us?”

I shot him a look. “No, not between us. There’s no time for ‘us’ right now. We’re in the middle of the fucking forest Dex and I’m pretty sure that, that thing, is out there looking for us!”

He cocked his head, eyes turning hard. “There’s no time for us?”

“Are you deaf?” I knew it sounded nasty the minute it left my mouth, but it was too late.

Dex was caught off guard, looking stunned. “You’re angry. Why are you angry?”

“I’m not,” I told him and walked away, back to the clothes. Or maybe I was. I wanted to get out of here, I wanted to run away and I couldn’t. We were stuck there, naked except for the space blankets that Dex was finally wrapping himself up in, and there was nowhere for us to go. Nowhere for me to go, to just get a handle on things and think. I felt trapped, scared and confused.

His brow lowered, his hands gripping the edges of the blanket. “Are you trying to punish me?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Punish you?”

He smiled with eyes that remained cold. “Yes. For what I did to you. Is this my payback? First you fuck Maximus and now this?”

My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, blood whooshing loudly in my veins. “What?!”

“Don’t tell me you actually wanted to do him.”

I threw my hands up in the air, nearly losing my blanket in the process. “What does that have to do with anything? This isn’t about punishing you, this is about how fucking inappropriate it was, what we just did, with all this shit going on. Dex, this is a life or death situation we are in and I need you to focus on that. Not this ‘us’ bullshit!”

He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving my face. They were growing darker and harder by the second. “You think all of this was bullshit?”

I buried my face in my hands, growling in frustration. “I’m not even wearing fucking clothes.”

“Do you?” he repeated. His voice was louder, causing my heart to shake. “Do you think we’re bullshit? After everything we’ve been through…”

I still didn’t look up. “There isn’t time.”

“You were fucking possessed when you slept with him!” he yelled. I couldn’t believe he was still hung up on the whole Maximus thing. I should have known that he was harboring a grudge about it.

“Don’t tell me then there isn’t time, because you fucking made time to fuck him and deal with that! Why not me?”

My eyes snapped up and I felt my chest shrink at the wild, pained look that was raging across his face. “You broke my heart!” I spat out. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He took a step toward me, shoving his finger in my face. “And you need to get the fuck over yourself!”

I gasped and stumbled back from him, feeling blind and stupid in my anger. “How dare you!? After everything you put me through!”

“Oh, I dare,” he said, baring his teeth. “I dare and I’ll continue to dare until you can just give me a fucking break.”

My head felt like it was going to cave in; the frustration was rising up in my throat, tasting sour. “I don’t understand this, I don’t!” I cried out. “We just had sex, who fucking cares, it was just sex and it’s over and now we have more important things to worry about. Why can’t you see that? Just drop it. Why do you care so much about this?”

“Because I love you!” he roared. A sledgehammer swung right into my heart. The words took their time to soak in, permeating each bone in my body, sticking to the marrow. I was speechless. Breathless.

Then heartless. The injustice spewed right out of me.

“You,” I sneered, unable to control myself, my eyes slicing into his. “You don’t get to tell me that. That isn’t fair.”

“You want to talk about fair? You lied to me! You’re going on like I ruined your whole world, like you’re some holy, pious creature who’s never done a wrong thing in her life, but you lied to me. You switched my pills just to see what would happen, with no regard of what the fuck that would do to me, then when I asked you if you loved me, you looked me straight in the eye and you said no. You lied. You. Loved. Me!”

“You’re right! I did! Past tense!”

“I know it’s past tense. You couldn’t be more obvious about it!”

Oh good, because I wasn’t done.

“You slept with me, then freaked out and treated me like, like a used condom!” There was no turning back now. It was all out on the table, every feeling either of us had ever felt.

His hands gripped his blanket even harder and he marched up to me, his eyes crazy in the heat of our words, his jaw clenched tight. “How poetic, Perry,” he said, struggling to bring his voice down, to stay calm. “Do you know why I freaked out? Because I realized I’d fallen in love with my best friend. The very same person who had just told me she didn’t love me. Call me an asshole for overreacting but that’s what happened. You’re not the only one who is hurting here, Perry. At least I didn’t do it deliberately.”