I want to argue. I want to tell him about my father’s voice in my head, about lines that were supposed to be fences not invitations, about the camera of my conscience that red-lights when the door opens, when the night eats me whole. I want to say the wordsAndrewandfamilyandwrongand I want to mean them more than I want to be pressed into wood with his mouth at my neck. I open my mouth to try and all that comes out is a soft sound that is not language.
He hears it like a confession. Maybe it is. He angles closer and the rest of the world falls out of frame. The house becomes a postcard. The party becomes weather. He is the only true thing left.
“I could make you beg.” He growls into my skin, not like a threat, more like a carefully stated fact about gravity. “I could take my time until you forget where you end and I begin.”
The words are too much and not enough. They land in the place where my pulse is loudest and settle there. I don’t want to beg. I want to be braver than that. I want to be good. But I am soft where he is firm, and the way he waits for me to answer says he already knows the shape of my answer. It terrifies me how much that steadies me.
“Someone will come outside.” I say again, weaker, because it’s the last barrier I know to hold up. “They’ll see.”
“Then keep your voice sweet.” He murmurs, and the dark has never felt more like a sanctuary and a dare at the same time.
His mouth returns to my throat, slower, deeper. I feel the shape of his breath before the press of fingers sliding inside me. And that anticipation, lights every nerve pretty and bright. My head tips back against the boards and one of the thin slats creaks, a small, human sound in the middle of all this. I bite my lip to stifle another. It doesn’t matter. The night hears me anyway. He hears me.
“Triston.” I whisper again, because there is nothing else to hang onto. His name is a handhold in a storm I asked to be swept into.
“Yes.” He answers, and the word is a claim and a comfort. His hand has settled at the hem of my skirt, not insistent, just present, a question asked without a single syllable. The cold at the back of my knees makes me too aware of the warm path his fingers could choose. The restraint sits there like a shared secret. He could. He doesn’t. Not yet. The waiting isn’t mercy. It’s art.
The ache blooms brighter like an opening flower, a crush of color behind my eyes. I don’t move away. I move closer. So close the air can’t fit between us. My body has picked a side and left my thoughts scrambling to catch up. He makes a quiet sound that approves of me more than anything anyone has said to me in a year, and I feel shame rise because I love that approval as much as I do. Shame dissolves quickly in heat. The heat doesn’t leave.
His mouth leaves my neck only to find my jaw, then the hinge where my breath catches, then the hollow just before my ear. The words there cut me like knives.
“You feel what I’m doing to you.” He whispers. “You feel me without me having to take anything at all.”
I let out a small, helpless sound that is not agreement and is also entirely agreement. There’s a split second where panic flares bright.This is too much, this is too close.And then it collapses under the weight of how much I want him. I don’t know what that says about me. I only know it’s true.
I think of my dad for half a heartbeat. I think of what his face would look like if he saw. The thought should freeze me. It doesn’t. It makes the night more urgent, more electric. It makes the risk taste like spice on my tongue.
“Please.” I whisper, and it’s not begging exactly. It’s more like the word you say when you’ve reached the edge of yourself and you need the next step to appear.
He stills, only for a moment, like he’s cataloging the exact flavor of thatplease.Like he’s putting it in a box labeledmineto take out later and turn over in his hands. When he moves again, it’s the same patience, the same control, and I am grateful and undone by both.
“You’re not going back inside yet.” He says softly, like he’s telling me something inevitable. “You belong in the dark with me a little longer.”
I nod. It’s ridiculous to nod at the night like it asked a question, but I do. My breath fogs and breaks. Somewhere inside the house, someone shouts and laughter rises like waves. The yard stays on our side. The shed keeps our secrets. The wind threads a few loose strands of my hair and his fingers smooth them back, and that small tenderness in the middle of all this heat makes my throat close.
“I’m not running.” I say, and it feels like a vow, or maybe like surrender.
“Good.” He says, and his mouth finds my pulse again.
I close my eyes because they are useless here. Everything that matters is touch and sound. The texture of wood against my spine. The weight of his palm anchoring my hip. The coaxing of his breath moving over my skin like a tide that carries me out and back. The words that sayno one elsewithout needing the sentence. My body answers and answers and answers until I am fluent.
A quiet noise escapes me, not loud enough to travel, only enough to make him hum his approval into my skin. The sound trembles through me. The heat is a gathering storm. I don’t know where he will take this. I don’t know where I want him to take it. I only know I want it to keep going until the part of me that is afraid of everything has to give up and rest.
“Tell me what you want.” He says, and it’s not a taunt. It’s a key he’s holding out, the kind that opens more than one door.
I don’t have a clean answer. Every answer I have is messy and made of him. I let my head fall back, let the night take one more piece of me, and say the only true thing I can manage.
“Don’t stop.” I whisper.
His breath breaks against my throat on a soft, satisfied laugh, and then the dark pulls tighter around us like a promise.
The words are barely out of me when his hand tightens at my hip, not painfully, but with a certainty that makes my wholebody tense. It’s the kind of grip that says he was waiting for that answer, waiting for me to give him permission to keep bending me to his will.
The night is silent except for the faint muffled bass leaking from the house. Even the air seems to hold its breath with me. Triston doesn’t rush. He leans his weight into me with slow, steady pressure until the shed digs into my back, and there’s no question: I’m caught. He owns this moment, owns me inside it.
My heart is a snare drum, rattling so hard I’m afraid he’ll hear it. He lowers his mouth to my ear again, his voice pitched so low it barely registers as sound.
“You sound so sweet when you give in.” He whispers. “Like you were made to.”
