His lips brush mine, a breath of a kiss. I lean into it, but he doesn’t deepen. He pulls back with a wicked smirk.
“Still mad at me?” he asks, voice like velvet.
“Yes,” I manage.
“Good,” he whispers against my neck, lips skating lower. “Becausemaking-up is my favorite part. And now I’m going to show you exactly what happens when you keep secrets from me.”
The air narrows, folds in on us like the secret we’ve kept too long. He’s in my space, my breath, my bloodstream. Every inch of him is just shy of contact, but I feel him everywhere. In the thrum beneath my skin. In the anticipation coiling low in my belly. In the silence that begs to be broken by us.
“You and me,” he breathes. “We’re a goddamn mess.”
His hands find my waist.
“But maybe,” he whispers, “we make beautiful wreckage.”
He kisses me. And it’s not sweet. It’s not slow.
It’s a goddamn implosion.
A kiss that carves, that bruises, that bears the weight of everything we’ve said and everything we couldn’t. It’s need without apology, desperation without shame. His hands slide beneath my shirt, starving for skin.
My fingers are in his hair, tugging him closer, anchoring myself to the one thing that’s never felt like a mistake.
Because this isn’t a mistake.
This is inevitable.
Clothes become obstacles. Buttons snap, zippers hiss, fabric is discarded. He spins me, presses me to the wall, one hand gripping my hip like it belongs to him, the other burying into my hair with a control that trembles at the edge.
I moan as his mouth trails down my throat, his teeth scraping enough to cause a delicious hurt, enough to make me arch. He soothes it with his tongue, then does it again—marking me, claiming me, giving me the apology we never put into words.
His hand slides higher, wrapping gently around the base of my throat—not to squeeze. Just to hold. To remind me I’m his. I’ve always been his.
My pulse pounds beneath his palm.
He feels it. Tracks it. Feeds off it.
“That mouth of yours has lit me on fire for weeks,” he growls, “and now I’m gonna make you feel every fucking word.”
I can’t breathe. I don’t want to.
Spinning back, I yank Nolan into me, our mouths crashing, tongues tangling in a kiss that doesn’t ask for permission—it seizes it, conquers it.
We stumble toward the bed together in the same breath. His urgent hands are everywhere. And when he speaks, it isn’t pure, unfiltered heat.
“I’m not just going to fuck you, Rorie.”
Pressing me into the mattress, he settles above me, gaze burning into mine. His eyes are molten, roaming over every inch of me like I’m a puzzle he’s waited his whole life to solve.
His hair’s wild.
His breathing’s ragged.
His soul is naked.
“I’m going to show you what it means to be wanted. Worshipped.Chosen.”
And right then?—
