Page 12 of Tempted By Shadow

“Fuck,” she pants. “Fuck, that was⁠—”

I crawl back up her body and kiss her, letting her taste herself on my tongue. She moans into my mouth and reaches for my belt.

“Off,” she demands. “Now.”

I stand long enough to strip — belt, jeans, everything — and when I come back to her, she’s looking at me like she wants to devour me. Her eyes track down my body where I’m hard and aching for her.

My whole body is thrumming, desperate, barely under control.

I settle over her, bracing myself on one arm, and line up at her entrance. She’s slick and hot and when I push inside her, just the tip, we both groan. The sound she makes — relief and want and finally — undoes something in me.

“More,” she says.

I give her more. Inch by inch, slow and relentless, until I’m buried to the hilt. She’s so tight around me, so perfect, and I have to hold still for a moment just to keep from losing it completely. I press my face to her neck and breathe her in, feeling her pulse against my lips, feeling her body adjust to mine.

“You okay?”

“Move.” She rolls her hips, taking me deeper, and I see stars. “Shadow, move.”

It’s not gentle. Not slow. I fuck her hard, the way I’ve been wanting to since the parking lot, since that first smirk, since she looked at me like I was nothing and made me want to be everything. She matches me stroke for stroke, hips rising to meet mine, nails raking down my back hard enough to sting.

The bed frame hits the wall with every thrust. I don’t care. She doesn’t care. The only thing that matters is this — her body under mine, the sounds she’s making, the way she’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world.

“Yes,” she gasps. “God, yes, just like that⁠—”

I hitch her leg higher on my hip, changing the angle, and she cries out. There it is. That’s the spot. I hit it again. Again. Watch her face as she starts to come apart beneath me — her eyes glazing, her lips parting, her whole body tensing around me.

“Come for me,” I growl against her ear. “Let me feel you.”

She shatters. Her whole body clamps down on me, pulsing, squeezing, and I follow her over the edge with a groan that comes from somewhere deep. I bury myself as deep as I can go and let it take me, let everything else fall away until there’s nothing but her.

For a long moment, neither of us moves. I’m collapsed on top of her, trying to remember how to breathe, and she’s got her arms wrapped around me like she doesn’t want me to leave.

I don’t want to leave either.

That’s the problem.

Afterward, we lie tangled together in her sheets.

The room is dark, and outside, I can hear traffic. Someone’s TV a few apartments over. Normal sounds. The world going on like nothing happened.

I should go. I know I should go. The longer I stay, the worse this gets — the harder it’ll be to walk away, the more I’ll want to come back. Every minute I spend in this bed is another nail in my coffin.

But she’s stroking my chest with her fingers, her head on my shoulder, and I can’t make myself move.

Her finger finds the scar on my ribs. The long one, raised and pale, curving from my side toward my stomach. She’s been avoiding it, I think. Circling around it. Now she stops, her touch featherlight.

“This one looks old,” she says.

“It is.”

“What happened?”

I could lie. Could brush it off, give her some bullshit story about a bike accident or a bar fight. That’s what I’d usually do. Keep people out, keep the walls up, don’t let anyone see the kid I used to be.

But I’m too wrung out to lie. Too raw. She just took me apart and put me back together, and I don’t have any defenses left.

“Got jumped when I was seventeen,” I say. “Couple guys I owed money to. They made their point.”