My breath brushed against the hollow of his throat, and I watched him swallow like he’d forgotten how. The scent of him was still firewood and whiskey, sin aged like fine wine and sharpened by restraint. He was letting me do what I wanted, but I knew this was another illusion, because if he wanted to take the lead, he would.
I pressed my lips to the dip of his collarbone, and he let out the softest sound. It was low, half-choked. Curse smothered in velvet.
His fingers twitched at my waist, but he didn’t stop me.
And that was the most dangerous thing of all.
He was letting me.
Like he wanted to see how far I’d go before I broke us both.
“You said I could use you,” I whispered against his skin. A confession I’d never admit sober.
One button. And then another. My hands found the line of his shirt, undoing it slowly, reverently, as though each glimpse of his flesh was a scripture I needed to memorise. My mouth followed the path, tracing skin over the sternum, mapping warmth and heartbeat.
“Is this what you want, Dolcezza?” His voice cracked around my name. It was ragged, burnt around the edges, yet pristine in the core.
It was lethargically hypnotising as if his voice was manipulating me more than the drug in my system.
“I don’t know what I want,” I said honestly, pressing my teeth into the curve where his chest met his shoulder. “But I need something to make the ache shut up.”
His head fell back against the leather seat, a sharp sigh leaving him. I felt his pulse kicking at his throat like a drum against my lips. And then… my fingers reached lower, between us.
I felt the tremble under my touch, like lightning waiting in copper wires.
I found the metal of his belt and unhooked it. My palm brushed against the hardness of him through fabric, and I felt his grip on my waist tighten, as if he was trying to anchor himself with the ghost of restraint. His hips shifted, the rough grind of his pants pressed between my aching thighs, and a sound escaped him. An unguarded, sinful moan that scorched my lungs.
He was beautiful like this.
Unravelled at the seams, thread by thread, under my hands.
He asked me to turn him into my little sin.
So I did. I kissed him like I had something to prove. Like maybe if I kissed him deep enough, I’d find a part of him that hurt me, haunted me, and the part I hated.
“You won’t leave me like them, right?” I didn’t know why I said that. Maybe it was the vulnerability. The ache in the chest. Or maybe I was reminded that my mother left me in the dark. Isuddenly recalled the touch of sand in my palms that I couldn’t contain.
He didn’t speak.
Just pulled me closer.
His hands slid from my waist to my thighs, grinding me against him until the ache inside me bloomed into wicked need. He held me as if I were something breakable and burning all the once. A prayer he couldn’t say out loud.
His voice came again, deeper now, with shadows in every word. He cupped my jaw, made me look into his stormy eyes, and there was this depth in them I couldn’t understand.
“I can destroy everything for you, Dolcezza. I’ve been yours from the first time you looked at me. Even if this world disappoints you again and again, I will always be there with you. In your dreams and nightmares,” he kissed my temple, “in your highs and lows,” his mouth hovered over mine, maddeningly close, “and in the places no one sees. In the thoughts no one dares to touch. You breathe, and I unravel.”
Then he kissed me like he wanted to ruin every version of me that existed before him.
I struggled to keep up, because he kissed me with the intention of erasing every version of me. It was slow, as if he had all the time to destroy every wall I’d ever built. His lips were warm and brutal and worshipping. And I let him. God, I wanted to let him.
A breath caught in my throat as I pulled back, and there it was, his face. That maddeningly calm exterior was cracking, like the seams of control were starting to bleed open. His jawclenched, the veins in his neck twitching with control, eyes glassed with hunger. He looked like a man on the verge of losing control… and loving every second of it.
I could’ve asked him to stop. But I didn’t.
Because there was a part of me – a small, shameful, and starving part – that needed this. Needed him to unravel. Not gently or softly, but in chaos.
I slid down, slowly, knees pressing into the cold metal of the car floor. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t even know who I was beneath the ache anymore. But my body knew what to do. My hands moved to his undone belt, and I felt him still again.
