I should be strategizing, cataloguing advantages like a chess player arranging pawns.
Instead, my palms sweat.
My breath shortens.
I can feel the hard outline of my cock through my trousers, and I do not care if it shows. I will not apologize for wanting what I want tonight.
Maybe I am always like this.
A man who wants to take and to save, whose tenderness is as violent as his hunger.
Maybe the vow I made to my father twisted me into something that loves the edges.
When the door to the penthouse clicks shut behind us, that small sound swallows the world whole.
The city below is a spread of indifferent lights. But up here? Up here, there is only the heat gathering between us.
I let go of her, and step away. The space between us fills with something heavier. Accusation, invitation, promise.
My voice is low and rough when I say, “You realize you’ve been reckless, coming here with me.”
She lifts her chin, that defiant tilt at the corner of her mouth I want to erase and memorize both.
“Maybe,” she answers, and there is steel under the softness. “Or maybe I knew exactly what I was doing.”
Both answers are true.
I cross the space in two long strides, the distance between us collapsing.
I want to devour her, to press my name into her skin and never let it fade.
I want to tell her every terrible reason why I cannot, and then do it anyway.
The hunger in me whispers that once this starts, there will be no turning back —not for her, or for me, or for what I came here to finish.
My hand finds her face.
I cup her jaw like I’m keeping a wild animal from bolting.
The gesture is both claim and care. Her pupils are blown, dark and wide, and when she parts her lips, it’s an invitation and a dare.
There is a storm in me, a hurricane I have been training for since childhood.
Tonight it wants to break over her, to erase the world with the force of it.
But the moment before my mouth finds hers is like a sliver of gold among straw. It’s hesitation. That tiny, mortal thing that makes the rest of the night sacred.
Instead of closing myself off to the wave of emotions threatening to drown me, I do something different.
I lean in.
The air between us tightens until it hums.
I grab her, spinning us until my back hits the door with a soft thud, and I pull her body flush against mine.
Then I kiss her like I’ve been starving for this moment all my life. Because I have.
Every moan, every breath, every tremor in her body feels like it belongs to me—and that thought both thrills and terrifies me.
