sweet,” Sebastian moaned as his lips nibbled their way down Ani’s body. “So beautiful,” he whispered, spreading Ani’s legs and pausing before he slid inside her. “Are you on the pill?” he asked hoarsely, suddenly realizing that he didn’t have a condom.
“With my fertility rate?” Ani choked. “Yes, I get birth control shots.” She pulled Sebastian back against her.
“ Well we don’t have a good track record with birth control,” Sebastian whispered as he finally pushed inside Ani with a moan.
“Oh my God, Bast,” Ani wept as he filled her, joining their bodies together after fifteen years apart.
“I love you Ani,” Sebastian whispered, thrusting into her fiercely. “I love you,” he whispered again as he buried his face in her breasts and poured himself into her with a deep, soul-wrenching moan.
“I love you too,” Ani admitted with a sob, feeling Sebastian’s tears trickle down her breasts as she realized that she’d just said the identical words to her husband only hours earlier when he’d claimed her body in the exact same way.
Ani and Sebastian fell asleep in each other’s arms as the dawn light broke through the sky and filtered into the apartment, bathing them in muted shades of orange and yellow.
When Ani opened her eyes sleepily a few hours later, she met Sebastian’s deep green eyes. He was lying on his side, trailing his fingers across her naked shoulders as he stared down at her with a thoughtful expression.
“What are you thinking about?” Ani asked softly.
“You,” Sebastian replied, leaning down and catching Ani’s bottom lip between his teeth.
“What d o the teardrops represent?” Ani asked quietly, reaching up and trailing her fingers under Sebastian’s eye.
“Prison teardrop tattoos can mean a lot of different things to different people,” Sebastian replied evasively. “Some people get them to represent lives that they’ve taken. Others get them for lives that they mourn, lives that they’ve lost.” His voice was thick with sorrow.
“What do these mean to you?” Ani asked, refusing to be deterred.
“Everything,” Sebastian replied softly.
“Which lives?” Ani persisted, wrapping her legs around Sebastian and pulling him down on top of her.
“All of them ,” he murmured sadly.
Ani raised her eyebrow quizzically as she continued to trace the two teardrops with her fingers.
“W hen I first did them, I just did the outline of the tear drops for Raffi and Eva,” Sebastian admitted.
“You did them yourself?” Ani asked in disbelief. Sebastian nodded in reply, covering Ani’s fingers with his own as he traced the teardrops on his face in memory.
“Then I filled them in for the lives that I took,” Sebastian explained, pressing Ani’s hand to his face.
“Why did you do two filled -in teardrops instead of four outlines?” Ani asked, pulling Sebastian’s hand away from the tattoos and replacing his fingers with her lips.
“Because the lives that I took and the lives that I lost are all intertwined,” Sebastian answered, his eyes locking with Ani’s.
“They are,” Ani breathed in agreement, pressing her forehead against Sebastian’s and closing her eyes. “Everything about us is intertwined,” she whispered hopelessly. “And I don’t know how to separate any of it Bast. I don’t know how to separate any of it.”
Ani and Sebastian spent the rest of the day wrapped around each other in bed, relearning each other’s bodies, discovering the changes and the things that were the same. They got up to go to the bathroom twice and Sebastian brought them cold bacon sandwiches and strawberries in bed, which they fed each other in-between caresses and whispered words of love. Ani’s phone dinged across the room from the pocket of her wet jeans several times, announcing a series of texts throughout the day and she steadfastly ignored it until it began to ring at four o’clock.
“A?” Sawyer’s voice filled Ani’s ear when
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