Page 59 of 13 Nights

"You're going to feel me tomorrow," I say against her ear. "Whatever happens. Wherever I am. You're going to carry the shape of tonight."

"Promises or threats?"

"Both."

I turn her to face me and pin her against the wall. The plaster is cool against her shoulder blades and warm where my hands brace on either side of her head.

I step back far enough to strip. She watches without helping, without looking away, without the courtesy of pretending this is anything less than what it is.

I kiss her. The taste of her mouth hits with the full force of restored sensation, and the hunger behind it is possessive, furious, unmistakable.

My teeth catch her lower lip. My hand closes around her throat, firm enough that she feels the authority and loose enough that her breathing doesn't change.

"Hold still," I say. "Don't make a sound until I tell you."

Her jaw tightens against the pressure of my hand. Defiance lives in Ashley even when she's obeying.

I drop to my knees. My mouth finds her without preamble, and the taste and heat of her undoes the last restraint I was maintaining.

I grip her hips hard enough to hold her still, pin her there, and apply myself to her clit with the thorough, relentless focus of a man memorizing what he's about to lose.

She’s silent because I told her to be silent, and the effort of that silence is visible in the cords of her neck, the white of her knuckles against the plaster, the controlled fury of her breathing.

I bring her to the edge and hold her. The tension in her thighs, the pitch of her breathing, the rhythm of the contractions against my mouth tell me the exact moment her body commits, and I back off one degree and let the peak recede.

Her fist slams the wall beside her hip.

"Severin."

"I said don't make a sound."

"Then finish it."

"When I decide."

She makes a sound that is part fury and part desperation and entirely, unmistakably Ashley. I press my mouth hard against her clit, grip her hips until my fingers leave bruises, and let her come.

The orgasm rolls through her in contractions I can feel against my tongue, and the sound she finally makes is worth every second of forced silence that preceded it.

Before the last contraction fades, I stand, grip her thighs, and lift her against the wall. She wraps her legs around me because there's nowhere else for them to go. When I push inside her in one hard stroke, the sound that escapes me is something I didn't know I had left to lose.

The full weight of sensation hits, her heat and tight grip stripping away whatever restraint I carried into the room. My forehead drops to the plaster beside her temple. My arms hold her weight. My heartbeat slams against her ribs so hard she must feel it through her own.

"Your restraint is gone," she says. Her voice is wrecked, but the assessment is mercilessly precise. Even now. Even pinned with my cock buried inside her, she is cataloging what she sees.

"My restraint has been gone since October nineteenth."

"I know." Her nails dig into my shoulders. "I've been waiting for you to admit it."

I drive into her harder. The angle is brutal, deep, exactly what I need. Each stroke hits with a force that shakes the framed print beside her head.

She doesn't ask me to slow down. She locks her ankles at the small of my back and takes what I'm giving her with the fierce, conscious surrender she's brought to every encounter between us.

I hold her gaze. The instinct is to look away, to bury my face against her throat where she can't read what's happening behind my eyes. I don't.

She doesn't look away either. I fuck her with everything the curse is giving back to me. The control I've wielded as shield and weapon and identity is cracking apart, and she is the only person who has ever been allowed to watch it happen.

"Come for me," I tell her. "Now."