I can’t answer, can only moan as he shifts the angle slightly and pounds that spot inside me that makes my vision blur.
“That’s because you’re mine, Emma.” His teeth graze my neck, not quite biting but close. “You can run to New York. You can pretend this doesn’t exist. But your body knows the truth.”
“Shut up,” I gasp, because he’s right and I hate it. Hate that my body is arching into him, begging for more. Hate that this feels like coming home when it should feel like betrayal.
“Make me.” His grin is feral.
I pull his mouth down to mine, kissing him hard enough to hurt, channeling all my confusion and anger and desperate need into it. He groans into it, his rhythm faltering for just a second before he regains control.
But I don’t want control. Don’t want slow or careful or thinking about consequences.
I bite his bottom lip,hard.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and something shifts in his eyes—something wild and possessive that makes my pulse spike. “You want it even rougher, swan? Is that what you need?”
“Yes.” The word tears out of me. “Stop treating me like I’ll break.”
His hand moves from my hip to my throat, squeezing. The gesture is pure dominance and I clench around him, loving every second of it.
“That’s my girl.” His voice is almost tender despite the filthy things he’s doing to me. “So fucking perfect for me.”
He pistons into me harder, the hand on my throat keeping me pinned, lightheaded, and I’m flying apart. The pleasure builds too fast, too intense, coiling tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only feel?—
“Bones—” His name comes out broken. “I can’t—I’m?—”
“Come for me. Let me feel your tight little cunt.”
I shatter, crying out as waves of pleasure crash through me. I’m vaguely aware that I’m sobbing his name, my nails raking down his back so hard I know I draw blood, my body clenching around him in rhythmic pulses.
He follows a heartbeat later with a guttural groan, his hips jerking against mine as he empties himself inside me. My name on his lips, a prayer and a curse all at once.
For a long moment we just lie there, tangled, breathing hard. His hand is still at my throat—gentler now, just fingers resting against my racing pulse. His weight grounds me, keeps me tethered when I feel like I might float away.
The rain drums against the window. The ceiling mirror shows our bodies still joined, slick with sweat and rain and each other.
I look like I’ve been thoroughly claimed.
I feel thoroughly claimed.
Fuck.
“Emma.” Bones lifts his head, his eyes searching mine. There’s something vulnerable in his expression, something that makes my throat tight.
I turn my head away. Because I can’t look at him right now. Can’t handle what I might see.
He rolls off me but doesn’t go far, one arm still draped possessively across my waist. His thumb traces circles on my hip bone, the gesture absent and intimate all at once.
I stare up at the mirror. Just . . . looking at us. My body feels awake, sated—switched back on after months of feeling muted.In my studio in Brooklyn, grinding through barre work until my feet bleed, I never feel this. I feel controlled. Perfect. Safe.
But not alive.
“You OK?” Bones asks quietly, and I shift my gaze to his.
“I genuinely don’t know,” I say, because I’m too raw right now, too wrung out to lie.
He’s quiet for a moment.
“Yeah. Me neither.”
