Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 46

She clawed at my back, her nails digging into my skin, urging me on. 

She looked up at me, her eyes glazed with lust and something deeper, something that made my heart skip a beat. And then I was pushing inside her,  filling her in a way that made us both gasp. We moved together, our bodies joined in the most intimate way possible. I thrust deep and hard, each stroke driving her closer to the edge. She wrapped her legs around my waist, meeting me stroke for stroke, urging me on.

The world fell away, the only thing that existed was the heat of our bodies, the slide of skin against skin. I could feel myself building, the pressure coiling in the pit of my stomach. She straddled the weight of everything, the pain, the temptation, the knowing this wasn't love but something else entirely. Something closer to surrender. To sin.

My hands trailed her back like scripture, memorizing where she was softest, where she flinched, where she clung to me like I might vanish. She moved with the grace of someone who had broken and rebuilt herself more than once.

There were no words for what we did, only breath, only rhythm. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t perfect. It was raw. Honest. And when she cried out, it wasn’t from pleasure alone, it was from release. Like something inside her was being exorcised. Like she was offering up every piece of herself and daring me to still want her. She shattered with a scream.

And I did too. God, I did.

When we collapsed together, slick with sweat and salt and silence, the storm had quieted outside, but not in me. Not in her. She curled beside me. One hand still holding mine. I stared at the ceiling, heart still racing. This wasn’t redemption. This wasn’t even healing. It was just two people lost enough to believe they’d found something sacred in the wreckage.

And maybe, for tonight, that was enough.

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Morning came like a curse.

The sun leaked through the cracks in the blinds, not warm, not comforting, just sharp. Cold gold. Like judgment in light form. The kind of morning that doesn’t let you pretend nothing happened.

I felt her fingers first. Olive’s hand moved slowly down the ridges of my spine, like tracing a scar she couldn’t see but swore she knew by heart. I stayed still, pretending sleep, praying the weight in my chest would just let me disappear. Maybe if I was quiet enough, I could go back. Undo everything. Pretend I didn’t give in. Pretend her kiss hadn’t tasted like the first lie in Eden.

But pretending didn’t erase the ache. I sat up, my back to her, the sheets falling around my waist. My throat burned. My palms trembled. The silence between us was heavier than our bodies ever were.

“What have I done…” I whispered.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften.

“You did what you do best, Drew…” she murmured behind me. “You ran away. Back to me.”

Her voice was velvet and venom. And then I felt her arms, snaking around my waist, her chin resting on my shoulder like nothing had broken. I pushed her off.

“No. This is wrong.”

She sat up, her hair messy, lips still parted with the residue of night.

“Wrong?” she scoffed. “It didn’t feel wrong last night, James.”

She reached for my hand. I pulled away like it burned.

“Stop,” I said, voice sharper than I meant, or maybe not sharp enough.

She didn’t move. Just tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

“Come on, Drew… I’m the one who’s here. Not her.”