Present day
“I can’t believe this.” I blinked twice, the hair on my skin rising. “Ajax…”
I lifted my eyes to him, and he was just as I remembered he was back then. One messy strand of his raven hair fell over his forehead. His arms were crossed. He leaned on the shelf, looking bad-boyish despite his well-shaved jaw and expensive suit. It was the same soul, the one who always saw me.
I inched closer to him, and his dark eyes finally assessed mine. My heart was beating an extreme symphony, and my hands roamed across his chest, wondering why I had made the wrong choice all along.
He was right next to me.
The one who thundered my heart.
“How could you have thought you wouldn’t be enough?” I breathed, and when his fingers grasped my hand to bring it to his mouth and kiss it, I knew I had already fallen too hard.
“I had nothing to offer you. I was so broke that I couldn’t afford anything, on bad terms with my family, unable to evaluate my feelings. I had accomplished nothing and gave up everything I ever did.”
For the first time, in his eyes, I could see pain. A long, everlasting pain, probably the reason why he wanted to run away from all of this. My gaze mirrored his, and my eyes glistened.
“You don’t see yourself as I see you,” I said, giving him the exact same sentence he had told me once. “You’re the man who madly, deeply, incredibly captured my heart.” I jumped on my tiptoes in an attempt to match his height. “You’re perfect to me. You don’t have to change anything.”
“And you’re perfect to me.” His hand captured my waist as his other cupped my nape. “You’re a character coming out from a fairy book, and I don’t care if it’s the sarcastic evil queen or the fairy godmother, as long as you’re you and mine. I found you again, and you found me with that magnificent letter of yours.”
“I’m so glad I sent it,” I chuckled, and the moment our eyes met, it felt like a bolt of lightning had struck us together, and we knew what would happen next.
Time flew by at full speed.
We had one timeless moment.
Soft and moist. Hot and breathy. Electric and delicious. This kiss was two not-so-opposites fitting together in an explosion of unknown flavors.
Fingers carded through my hair, and we breathed each other in. The hunger within my heart couldn’t be satisfied. I needed more of him and of what we could be. My eyes closed so my soul could speak, and our tongues tangled, battling madly like the first day. As if we shared one mind, he pinned me against the bookshelf, and my eyelids fluttered open. His were black, full of desire, and his breathing animalistic and rough.
“What are we doing?” I moaned, a feverish heat taking control of me. “What do you want?”
“You. To give you everything if you let me.” He pressed kisses on the column of my nape. “But for now, I think it’s about time I fuck you right on this shelf.”
He pressed his pulsing shaft against the fabric of my dress, growing thicker by the second. My body seemed to exist only for his touch, demanding more and more, responding to him like a magnet.
“It’s about time, indeed,” I muttered, and I caressed him over the top of his trousers, slow but teasing enough, my lip bite promising him a memory the old Ajax and Aurore would have remembered for their entire lives.
He let out a low growl, and I worked on his zipper. It was my turn to torture him as much as he did with me. I wrapped my fingers around his velvet flesh and stroked him.
His throat bobbed, and he cursed. “You can go harder, my fairy. You won’t break me.”
I tightened my grip around his length, and I quickened my pace. He jerked his head backward. His breathing quickened. Blood coursed to his tip. His eyelids closed, and my clit throbbed with anticipation. I stroked him faster, and this time, the intense dark of his eyes met the fiery brown of mine. He wet his lower lip, and an almost imperceptible chuckle escaped him, dark and seductive.
“You’re already killing me, controlling me with ease. It’s unfair.” Ajax dipped down, kissing me again.
I raised a brow, challenging him. “Wait until you see what my mouth can do.”
I bent down so I’d be at the height of his length, and I took him in fully. He snapped a fist to his mouth, and I took his animalistic groan as encouragement. Locking my eyes heavenward on him, I thrust him inside my mouth, moving in and out. He twisted his fingers into my hair, and his palm pushed me further onto him. I licked him from the bottom to his tip, circling the head of his hardness, as he growled, his whole body tensing. I used my tongue on him, swirling around his velvet flesh. I quickened my moves until I tasted the saltiness of his precum oozing from his tip.
At this moment, Ajax made me stand up, locking my body with his, and pulled a strand of my hair away from my face. “I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
“I missed you,” I panted with a fluttering stomach.
His skilled fingers worked their way under my dress, and he pulled my panties up, causing a delicious friction that made my clit ache with need.
“And you’ve possessed me,” he growled, pulling the fabric to the side so he could meet my wet folds.
And he did, a muscle clenching his jaw as if he was containing himself. He plunged a finger inside me, and I gasped. My walls quivered around him, and I rocked my hips forward, rubbing myself shamelessly against the pump of his finger, biting my lips together so I wouldn’t shriek.
He withdrew his finger from me, leaving me frustrated and flushed right until the moment he licked the taste of me, and a new wave of heat thrummed through my center.
“I’ve fantasized about the taste of you. I had to fuck myself in the shower at the bare thought of you,” his deep voice teased in an agonizing whisper. “I think I’m going insane.”
I wrapped a leg around his torso, a few books coming down at the contact of my back pinned against the shelf. “I did that too.”
“Next time you do, can I watch? Please,” he begged, lifting my dress up as I braced my other leg around him.
“That depends. What did you fantasize about?”
“I thought of waking up in the morning spooning you, your butt cheeks against my hardness, and making love to you. I thought of thrusting inside your sweet mouth before coming on you—breasts, mouth, I imagined it all. Tasting you as you ride me. I’ve thought of sixteen positions I want to have you in. So many probabilities that I couldn’t even make a list of them, and right now, I don’t even have enough time to appreciate you like I want to.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Don’t miss another second, then.”
He sealed his lips possessively and roughly on mine, our tongues intertwining. My arms curled around his neck, and I spread my legs wider, pressing my hips up to his. He knocked off the strap of my dress and lowered it, exposing my breasts, my nipples hardening under his stare. “Fuck, you’re not even wearing a bra.”
He locked my hands with his above my head on top of the shelf, my nails instantly digging into his palm. He cupped my breast, his lips closing on it. His tongue lashed out on the bud of my nipple and a tendril of pleasure that couldn’t be tempered unfurled through me.
“You know how perfect you are?”
This was his last statement before he drove briskly into me, and I bounced against the shelf. I gasped, trying to keep my eyes open. The items from the shelf fell beside us, but that didn’t matter. He tightened the grip of his palm, pressing on my wrists harder until my hands tingled. My arousal pooled between my legs. His forehead creased, and a drop of sweat drifted down from mine.
“Is it deep enough for you, my fairy?” He hit the end of me with merciless thrusts, and I shrieked, pain and pleasure melting as I adjusted to his thick length.
I nodded, unable to speak. He grasped my butt cheek, pounding inside me harder than our first time, his balls slapping against me. My nails scraped his back, and it was as if we were punishing ourselves for the love we felt. Our raspy breaths tangled, and I lost myself in the lust flaring in his irises.
“Spectre,” I moaned.
He nibbled and sucked on my bottom lip. “Good girl. You learned the lesson.”
Spectre held me up with the sheer strength of his arm hooked around my waist, continuing to pound inside me as he pulled me away from the wooden shelf. We were giving in to one another in the penumbra, and I was set aflame in the middle of the aisle that had changed our lives, sheltered from the rays of sunlight piercing through the broken window.
I bit on my lip so hard. “It feels so good.”
“Only ‘so good’? I guess I’ll have to make you change your mind,” he whispered on my neck, and I was certain he was inhaling the scent of my hair.
“I don’t think I can hold on much longer,” I begged.
“You can hold on, my fairy. I’m not finished with you yet. Give me more time.”
He gave me a mere second to catch my breath before my chest collided with the shelf, and his tongue lapped down the curve of my ear. My back arched, and he lifted my dress again so my ass was exposed to him. From behind me, he slid inside me again, and our moans echoed, the scents of parchment and wood mixing with his clean, fresh-out-of-the-shower fragrance.
His hands grasped my waist, and I moved with his motion. My legs shook, and if it wasn’t for Ajax holding me, I would have probably lost my equilibrium. My chest heaved. My stomach contracted with each of his drives. A pain rose in my chest. I had never felt something so powerful that it could tear me apart in a draft. Love—what bullshit.
He snaked his hand down the valley between my breasts before he thumbed one of my pebbled nipples. My hips swiveled the faster he moved against me, and when his fingers teased my clit, I lost it. He circled around it, his thrusts growing harder and more desperate. This time, I couldn’t contain the way my orgasm crested and the longing to come, racking my every nerve. He rocked us to the crescendo we both craved, and our orgasms wrenched us at the same time, consuming us whole. A loud cry escaped my lungs, and his arm hooked around me held me in place.
We remained breathless, his head buried in the hollow of my nape. Ajax placed a soft kiss on my forehead and pulled away from me. I turned around, still gasping, having the view of him buttoning up his dress shirt, adjusting his trousers, and tightening his belt. His face didn’t display anything, not the passion that had inhabited us a couple of seconds earlier nor the consuming feelings that might have been tearing him up inside. His face didn’t show any of that, no, but I knew his heart had felt it all.
I readjusted my messy hair that screamed of raw sex and tried to turn off the heat that flushed my cheeks. I held the strap of my dress, about to dress myself up like someone does quickly after a one-night stand.
“Let me do it.” This wasn’t a question, and there was not an ounce of hesitation in Ajax’s tone.
Not leaving me another choice, he prowled toward me and pulled the straps of my dress back up my shoulders. He ran his hand over my dress to smooth it out, readjusting each of the folds to perfection with dedication. He even brushed out some strands of my hair and erased the mascara that must have dripped down my cheek. Ajax may have fucked the hell out of me and be poker-faced by nature, but his gestures showed he was just as heartbroken as me about what needed to happen next. A slight smile formed on my lips. It was nice to be loved and cared for, for once.
“What now?” I broke the silence.
His jaw clenched. “We face reality.”
“You’re still leaving, and I won’t tell you to stay,” I said, swallowing away the pain trying to rip out my heart. “Not because I don’t want to, but because I care about you too much to hold you back. You have to do this. In a small-town romance, the hero changes, and he quits everything to live a simple life with his significant other, but I want more for you.”
“I know. Just like I won’t beg you on my knees to go with me because you need to figure out what you want like the fairy queen that you are.” He took a deep breath, his eyes assessing each detail of my face as if he wanted to remember everything about it.
“What are you going to do now that your identity has been revealed?”
He thought this through before a thin line sketched his lips. “I’ll learn to be human as you taught me. I’ll manage.”
Our fingers intertwined for an instant.
“Congratulations on your deal with Ever After. I never doubted you.”
“You were the first person I wanted to call,” I said. “I wanted to share it with you.”
“I know.” His thumb struck my bottom lip as if remembering the taste of my lips, and my stomach tightened even more. “At the thought I’ll have to board my fucking plane, it feels like I’m swimming against the tide.”
“And it feels like I’m drowning without you. Sometimes the right choices tear us apart, the way we have to sacrifice some things to have a quarter of the happiness of the hero.”
“But I refuse for it to be the end, Aurore. Even if I have to swim against a whole storm to go to that kingdom of yours, I’ll do it.” This was a promise.
“And perhaps, I’ll jump from the cliff to find you in a fall of life and death,” I continued.
“This is not our ending,” he repeated, articulating every word.
I nodded. “Not our ending.”
Heartbreaking, this was a goodbye. For now.
But in my world, goodbye turned into forever.
Because I knew how the story ended for people like us.
