Page 117 of Proof By Contradiction
‘You’re insane,’ he says.
‘And you’re a liar.’ I walk in. The door closes. ‘But I’m here.’
The first kiss is violent. My teeth on his lip, his hand in my hair pulling hard enough that my neck arches back, and the sound I make is not want. I shove him, and he catches my wrist. Twists. I’m against the wall, his weight pinning me, warmth at my neck, his cock hard against my hip and mine against his, and the friction is rough and artless and good.
He pulls his belt free. The leather through the loops, that sound, the one from last month, the one that meansgive me your hands, and I offer my wrists because I know this part, we’vedone this part, but when he loops the belt around and pulls it tight, his hands are shaking, and the shaking is new.
I pull free. One hard yank, the knot wasn’t secure, or he didn’t want it to be—his wrists now, my hands. I pin him to the bed, and his pupils dilate, and I hold his arms above his head and grind down.
We fuck. Rough. His legs around me, my hand under his thigh lifting the angle, the condom rolled on fast, practised, dark-room efficient. The first inch, resistance, then the give. His body decides, I hold there. Not patience, not tenderness, the physics of it, the pressure back against my cock that meanswait, and I wait, my teeth against his neck, and his hips tilt up by a degree, and that’s, that’s the answer. I push deeper, the heat of him. The closest heat that nothing else is. His thighs tighten. The sound he makes isn’t controlled. Surrender. A body saying yes before the mind’s caught up.
I set the pace, fast. Punishing. Every thrust carries the courtyard in it. Hugo’s smirk,you’re a symptom,the pity worse than contempt. I fuck him like I’m trying to drive that sentence out of my body and into his. Doesn’t work. The maths on this, anger just. He grabs my face. Both hands stop me mid-thrust.
‘Look at me.’
I look. His eyes are wet. Not crying, overflowing, a leak.
‘You’re not Hugo.’ His voice cracks on the name, Lancashire, coming through the fracture. ‘This is not the same thing.’
‘Prove it.’
He rolls me over. He finds every mark, the bruises from the window, the bite on my arm, the thumbprint on my hip, kissing each one with attention rather than urgency.
He works his way down. My cock, then lower. His tongue where I’m still open from the thrust and the sensation makes my spine. I grab the sheet. His mouth and fingers togetherand nothing like this, not after-sex territory when the sex was already supposed to be the?—
He strokes me again. Slow. By the time warmth closes around the base, I’m shaking, and he doesn’t speed up. Doesn’t give me the release I’m looking for.
‘Please.’ My voice. Wrecked, unrecognisable.
He takes me to the edge. Holds me there. His fingers curl inside me at the angle that makes my vision?—
I come so hard that the sound that leaves me isn’t a sound. Everything I’ve been holding since the courtyard exits my body in a single convulsion, and he stays; the patience; the fucking patience of this man who treats my body like a proof he’s determined to complete without shortcuts.
Nobody has ever done this to me.
He moves up and lies beside me. Doesn’t ask for reciprocation. His cock is hard against my thigh. He ignores it.
I reach for him anyway. My hand. Slow. I stroke and watch, and he comes into my fist, the sound small and private and aimed at no one but me.
Dawn. The curtains gaped. Vienna’s sky is grey-blue, the indeterminate colour before daylight commits.
‘I should have told you.’ His voice in the half-dark. ‘About everything. From the beginning.’
‘Yes. You should have.’
Silence.
‘But I’m still here.’ It’s the first choice I’ve made in months that isn’t want or anger or the need to win. Something quieter that I don’t.
His arm around me, tighter than last time.
‘I know,’ he whispers—Lancashire, all of it.
I close my eyes. His breathing against my spine. The vertebrae he counted are still humming.
His presence is unhurried. That’s enough.
Eyes closed, body sore, breathing together.
