Litany Of Sins

14 Burned Into Their DNA

CHAPTER 14

Burned Into Their DNA

Lila did not speak. She did not have to. The way her breath hitched, the way her gaze dropped to his mouth—it was a surrender more absolute than any sentence she could have formed.

Everett did not wait for her to change her mind. He did not wait for permission. He closed the gap in a blur of motion, his hand cupping the back of her head, his fingers tangling into her hair as he slanted his mouth over hers.

The kiss was not tentative. It was not a question. It was a hungry, desperate collision that tasted of salt, cold beer, and ten years of starving.

Lila made a low, broken sound in the back of her throat, her hands flying up to grip his shoulders. The familiarity of it was instantaneous, a terrifying jolt to her system. Her body knew this rhythm.

Her muscles remembered the way he arched, the way he deepened the pressure until she was breathless. It was as if no time had passed at all—they were just back in the rhythm, picking up a conversation they had never truly finished.

With a low, guttural growl, Everett shifted. He abandoned the space between them, his heavy, muscular weight pinning her back against his discarded blazer. He moved with the predatory grace she remembered so well, his knees pushing hers apart until he was settled firmly between her thighs.

The sand shifted beneath them, but neither of them cared. He broke the kiss for a split second, his lips grazing her jawline, his breath ragged against her ear.

“God,” he rasped, his voice vibrating through her chest. “I have spent every night for ten years wondering if I would ever feel you like this again.”

He did not give her a chance to answer. He slammed his mouth back onto hers, his hips shifting instinctively, pressing against her in a way that was both agonizing and ecstatic. It was violent, reckless, and perfect. The clinical, cautious woman she had been all day vanished, burned away by the friction of his skin against hers.

An involuntary moan tore from her throat as she arched into him, her body betraying every ounce of restraint she had claimed to possess. He did not hesitate, hitching her skirt up to slide his palms against her skin, and she immediately locked her legs around his waist to pull him flush.

He was a solid, searing weight, his hardness grinding rhythmically against her already-damp core. Their tongues clashed with the desperate, jagged precision of muscle memory—a rhythm they had not had to relearn, because it was burned into their very DNA.

She wanted the weight of him again on her. She wanted the familiar ache. She wanted to be consumed, and as his hands slid down to grip her hips—firm, demanding, and exactly where they belonged—she realized she was not just remembering the past.

She was reclaiming it.

Is this wrong? The question flickered briefly, a half-formed thought she immediately buried beneath the rising tide of her own desire.

Her eyes were squeezed shut, the world narrowing down to only two sounds: the rhythmic, crashing tide and the sharp, decisive sound of his belt buckle giving way. Her hands abandoned the solid heat of his chest, sliding down to his waist where she unfastened his trousers with trembling, eager fingers.

The moment he pushed his boxers down, she felt the hot, heavy length of him against her skin when she pulled it out. He was as lengthy thick and solid as her muscle memory had promised. As her hand closed around him and felt the violent, eager twitch of his arousal, he groaned into her mouth. The sound was not just pleasure—it was hunger—and it made her pulse race with a thrill of ownership.

A broken moan escaped her, swallowed instantly by his tongue as it tangled deeper with hers. His hand found her breast, kneading the soft flesh with a desperate, starving familiarity that made her skin flush.

He broke the kiss, his lips trailing down to her jawline, his mouth dragging over her skin in a series of teasing licks and sucks—a rhythm he knew by heart, one that she had been silently craving for years.

He groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure need, as she kept him anchored in her palm. With his free hand, he shifted her lace underwear aside, sliding his rigid tip against the slick, burning heat of her, letting her feel the friction of him against her center.

The dimly lit beach was a sanctuary of shadows and sound, the only witnesses to their collision being the relentless, thundering crash of the ocean against the shore. The rhythm of the waves was wild and chaotic, yet it perfectly mirrored the sudden, desperate urgency that had taken hold of them.

He positioned himself against her, the friction of their skin searing in the cool night air. He did not hesitate. With one hand cupping her hip and the other tangled in her hair, he pushed into her.

The sensation was absolute. Lila let out a sharp, breathless gasp that was instantly swallowed by his mouth. As he drove himself fully inside her, the sheer, overwhelming fullness of it—the way he fit as if no time had passed at all—shattered her restraint.

“f**k,” she hissed, the curse tearing from her throat, raw and unbidden. It was a release of a decade’s worth of tension, a jagged exclamation of shock and recognition.

Everett groaned, his forehead dropping to rest against her shoulder, his body tensing with the same visceral impact. It had been more than ten years—a lifetime of distance, of “what ifs,” of other people and other lives—and yet, the moment they locked together, it was as if the decade had simply dissolved into smoke. Their bodies were speaking a language they had not forgotten, a primal, rhythmic dialect of want that needed no translation.

He began to move, a slow, deliberate thrust that set her nerves on fire. Lila arched into him, her legs tightening around his waist, anchoring him deeper. Every movement was a reclamation. She moaned, a sound that started low in her chest and rose to meet the roar of the surf, her hands digging into his shoulders to pull him closer, to fuse them together.

Their lips met again, frantic and hungry, tasting of beer and wine and saltwater and the dizzying intensity of the moment. He moved in and out of her with a steady, punishing rhythm, his hips grinding against hers until the friction was unbearable in the best possible way.

“Don’t stop…” She moaned softly against his lips.

“Never.” He responded hungrily and pounded on her harder, causing her to whimper as they kept kissing.

The world outside of that small, sandy cove ceased to exist. There was only the sound of the ocean, the weight of him pressing her into the blazer beneath them, and the devastating realization that even after all this time, their bodies had not just remembered each other—they had been waiting for this.

They had been starving for this.

And as he picked up the pace, matching the relentless energy of the tide, Lila realized that the silence between them for the last ten years had finally, violently come to an end.

“Yes—yes—yes—yes—” The word spilled from her lips like a frantic, breathless prayer, a chant of pure, unadulterated need.

He had found it—the exact, agonizingly perfect angle—and he did not hold back. He did not need a map; he knew that sound, knew exactly what it meant to have her caught on that sharp edge of pleasure. He drove into her harder and faster, his hips slamming against hers with a rhythmic, punishing force that shattered whatever was left of her composure.

The rhythmic, wet sound of their bodies colliding echoed against the roar of the ocean, drowning out everything but the heat between them. Lila arched into him, her knuckles white as she gripped the blazer beneath them.

“Don’t stop f*****g me,” she gasped, the command tearing from her throat as she threw her head back, her eyes squeezed shut against the sensory overload.

Everett braced himself above her, his gaze locked onto her face, watching the way she unraveled beneath him. He did not just watch; he studied her, feeding on the sight of her absolute surrender. With every punishing, relentless slam, he drove himself deeper, filling her until there was no space left.

“Oh, Everett–” She gasped louder as she felt him absolutely deep inside her.

“I am not going anywhere,” he rasped, his voice thick with a hunger that bordered on violence. “I am taking all of you.”