Oh God.

My mind blacked out, consumed by having him in me, above me, around me.

Our bodies couldn’t get close enough. His legs tangled with mine. His stomach stuck to mine with every breath.

Kissing.

Devouring.

Fucking.

We spun our own time frame as his hands left my hair and skated down my body. Every inch of me blazed with supernovas and stardust, wanting him to abuse me with love.

He kissed me so deeply, my mind splinted into mirrored fractals granting me a new memory while sending me whirling into another.

I held him.

I held his naked cock in my hand for the very first time. I’d never felt anything like it. Silk but steel. Velvet but rock. Dry but wet at the very tip.

He fascinated me.

He lay on his back, eyes squeezed shut. His chest rose and fell as if he’d run miles.

With my tongue peeking between my lips in concentration, I stroked him.

The reaction was instantaneous.

His torso jerked off the sand and his groan made every inch of me quiver.

I stroked him again and again. Craving the way he came undone before me, giving me complete power over him.

I fell deeper into love, harder into lust. I became obsessed with making him explode.

“I loved making you come that first time,” I breathed, tearing my bruised lips from his as Arthur thrust harder.

“I couldn’t help it. Fuck, you drove me mad that day. I had the self-control of a saint to stop myself from rolling on top of you and taking your virginity right there.”

I cried out as his hips pulsed, his cock thickening inside me at the thought. “You should’ve. I wanted you to.”

He came.

His head snapped back and a cry tore from his lips. His entire body quaked as I stroked him up and down, up and down.

I’d never seen someone give ultimate control to another but his body surrendered everything to me in that moment—every muscle seizing with bliss, his mind utterly blank from everything but waves of pleasure.

Spurts of white ribboned onto his black T-shirt, arching through the air with every pulse of his hips into my hand.

It both scared and thrilled me. I wanted to do it again and again. To force him to relinquish control to me—to trust me completely.

Arthur dragged me back, his hand clutching my hip as his thrusts lost uniformity, driving relentlessly and punishingly. An orgasm sparked, half from him taking me now and half from us in another time.

Art’s fingers felt amazing inside me, but his thumb was the magic.

My pussy rippled around his digits as the first band of whatever teased me responded to his hesitant touch. I cried out as he thrust and rubbed, the combination of the two sensations driving me up, up and up.

“I want you to let go, Cleo. You made me come. I want to do that for you.” His lips landed on my cheek, then chin, then throat, spreading fire through my blood.

His finger hooked upward, pressing against a spot inside that wasn’t flesh and blood but magic and love-laced.

“Oh God. Art, yes.” I wanted to beg him for more, to never stop, but he knew what I wanted.

His wrist jerked up and down as he drove his finger harder and faster into me. My hips bowed up to meet him. I lost all pretense of shyness and demure young woman and gave myself in to the grip of sin.

This was where I belonged. Here. With him.

“I’m—I’m—” I didn’t know what I was. Shattering perhaps? Splitting into two as my core tightened and tightened until I thought I’d combust.

“You’re coming, Buttercup. Give it to me. Give me your first.” Art’s lips took mine, his tongue thrusting in time with his finger.

I couldn’t hold on any longer and my body demolished beneath his touch, imploding on itself before shooting outward in a billion tiny rays of heaven.

“God, I’m coming…”

I couldn’t help it. The memory of that time drove me to the point of detonation.

“Fuck, wait for me. Wait!” Arthur picked up his pace. Our breathing matched—tattered and broken as pleasure became too much for single cells to feel. He was the perfect maestro—giving my body no choice but to reach the pinnacle of release.

His fingers dove into my hair again, his elbows digging into the sand by my ears as he drove himself as deep as possible.

Then he came.

Shuddering and trembling, cursing and panting, he set off my own explosion.

Tiny comets shot from my core and into my heart, and every crash of pleasure gave more of my soul to him. He gave me another piece of himself, too, but stole so much more in return.

Our hearts thrummed to the same beat as we finally calmed and our lovemaking ceased to a gentle rock.

I would always keep what happened here tonight locked away inside—just like that first time. I would hoard it like a priceless gift. Arthur was mine. As much as I was his.

It was fate.

My heart fisted with pain at the thought of never experiencing our first times together. A brown-eyed boy I still couldn’t remember had taken mine in awkwardness and dissatisfaction, and Arthur… I couldn’t think about Arthur giving up something so precious to a whore.

But that was in the past. I never wanted to be with another man. Ever.

Arthur was it for me.

For life.

“Tell me about the tattoo. Apart from the equations and the poems I recognize, I don’t understand it.”

My eyes opened to find Arthur propped up on an elbow, his silhouette cast in silver by the moon.

We must’ve drifted for a while because the moon had moved from where it had been while I’d been on my back with him between my thighs.