CASSIAN
The heat in the room had turned thick, smelling of salt and the wool of the thrown-back blankets.
Noah was beneath me, his fingers dug so hard into the meat of my shoulders that his nails left white crescent dents in the skin.
The mattress groaned under the steady, heavy slide of our bodies. Every time I came down against him, the breath left him in a dry, flat gasp that brushed my collarbone.
I had my hands planted on either side of his head, my knuckles pressed into the pillows, trying to hold myself up, trying to keep from crushing him under the sheer, stupid weight of how much I wanted to sink.
I was trying to be careful. I was always trying to be careful with him, as if he were something that could split down the middle if I forgot myself.
Then Noah's hands slid from my shoulders. They went to my hips, his fingers hooking into the bone, and he pulled down. Hard.
