She grabs my wrist, hard. “If you ever hurt me again—”
“I won’t,” I say, and I mean it.
She lets go, and I touch her face, slow, learning the shape of her jaw, the way her pulse jumps under my fingers.
I kiss her again, softer this time. She parts her lips, lets me in, and I feel the moment she lets herself want it. She arches up, legs tightening around me. I move my hand up, under her shirt, palm flat on her stomach.
She’s shaking.
I break the kiss. “You’re cold.”
“I’m not cold,” she whispers, and I realize it’s fear.
I pull back, just enough to see her. “We don’t have to.”
She grabs my hand, presses it to her chest, right over her heart. It’s beating hard enough to bruise. “I want to,” she says, and for the first time, she means it.
I pull her shirt off, slow, and she puts her arms up so I can slip it off. Her skin is marked—bruises from tonight, a scar on her side, a line of red where glass caught her earlier. Her nipples are dark,peaked. I take her in, all of her, and wonder how anyone could ever call her fragile.
How anyone could get a taste and let her walk away.
She watches me, waiting for me to judge her. I don’t.
I lower my head, mouth to her breast, and she exhales, a sound that’s half relief, half hunger. I bite, just enough to leave a mark, and she gasps, nails raking my back.
She pulls my shirt over my head, rips it off with a violence that makes me grin.
She touches my tattoos, traces the lines with her tongue. Her hands are everywhere, mapping me like a territory she’s about to invade. I restrain my need, let her take her time exploring me.
She finds the scar on my ribs, the one that almost ended me sophomore year. She presses her mouth to it, kisses it like it’s sacred.
I want to say something, but the words don’t come.
She works my pants open, pushes them down, and my cock springs free, hard and desperate for her. She stares at it for a second, then grins, wicked.
“Arrogant,” she says again.
“You love it.”
She does. She takes me in her hand, strokes me slow, thumb rubbing the head. I groan, the sound ripped from my chest.
She pulls me down, mouth to mine, and she sets the pace as she shimmies out of what’s left of her pants.
She guides me in, slow, the heat of her wrapping around me, and I almost lose it right there. She’s tight, so tight, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from finishing already.
She feels it. She laughs, low. “Don’t you dare.”
I hold still, buried inside her, and the world stops.
She rocks her hips, just a little, and I move with her. We find a rhythm, slow and deep, every thrust a conversation. Her hands never leave my skin, her mouth always looking for another place to taste.
I slide my hand under her ass, lift her, get the angle just right. She gasps, then moans, loud. She doesn’t care if the world hears.
I fuck her slow, every inch, every second. I watch her face, the way her eyes flutter, the way her mouth opens. I want to memorize it.
I say it before I know I’m going to.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” I murmur, and she stops moving, just for a second.
