Page 231 of These Tears

His hand leaves my cheek and covers my breast, thumb dragging over the sensitive peak until the world fractures and nothing but sensation is left. With the other, he pulls my thighs wider, dragging me closer. His fingers trail down with a patience that feels almost cruel, over skin already pebbling for him, and over the place where want has made me helpless.

Until they slip inside my knickers.

He stops and it nearly cleaves me in two.

I lift my hips, seeking more, giving him the answer his demons need. And he slides the fabric down my legs, letting it fall beside the bed.

When he returns, I gasp at the sweet invasion of him.

Nothing about this resembles the beginning. His fingers inside me are not a conquest, and my hand around him is not surrender. He changes direction when I tense and moves when I pull him closer, all the while the camera is marking the proof of both our choices.

A feral sound from his mouth spills into mine and something snaps loose in him. His hand grips my thighs roughly, lifting me, pinning me back against the boards where the bed meets the wall. The last of his control falters. As my legs lock around his waist, I feel him there… heavy. Insistent.

Our eyes meet. He searches mine and holds there, shaking at the precipice.

I can’t bear the distance still left between us.

‘I need you,’ I whisper.

Before I finish the sentence, he pushes into me with one slow, devastating thrust that obliterates the sounds that form in our throats. The stretch burns bright enough to blur the room, pain blooming through me in a way my body opens to – welcomes.

His moan breaks into mine; my nails dig into his shoulders, and for a breathless second the whole world narrows to the place where he fills me and I hold him there.

His mouth moves over mine as he begins to move in a deep, uneven rhythm. His teeth drag along my jaw and close carefully over the tender place beneath my ear.

I arch into the bite just as his fingers tangle back into my hair until the sting pulls a sound from me. He stills for half a beat, checking my face.

I answer by locking my heels behind him and drawing him deeper.

The size of him still shocks me.

The fullness.

The pressure.

The wrongness of how right it feels.

Better than memory.

Better than fantasy.

Better than anything I’ve ever felt.

And there, with his breath against my skin, I realise how desperate I was for this… since Stonebrook. Since the first time those chained hands made me wonder what they would feel like if they were free.

His restraint splinters on the next thrust. The pace begins to take a harsher edge.

It’s too much.

And still, he turns every sharp move into ecstasy.

I cling to him as if this fall from grace is the only thing keeping me alive.

My fingers leave his curls and drag down the back of his neck, my nails biting lightly into his skin. He shudders as a broken growl spills out of him.

It makes his movements turn reckless. Every thrust is a dark answer to all the wanting we had buried beneath fury, hidden behind fear and called it survival.

Pleasure winds tauter in me. But I feel him changing too – his breathing falters, his muscles harden beneath my hands, every thrust loses another layer of control. His mouth drags over mine, teeth catching at my lower lip. The rhythm falters.