I pulled back an inch, stared at him. The left side of his mouth was swollen, his breath shaky, his eyes dark with something that looked an awful lot like surrender. But not weakness. Never that. Just… trust.
My heart thudded hard.
“I could’ve killed him,” Rio said, voice raw.
“But you didn’t,” I whispered. “You got him help.”
“I nearly…”
“Stop talking,” I said, brushing my thumb over his lips.
Rio shook his head slowly, overwhelmed. “Danny was just a kid, same as me. Took a deal to drop hands in the third just to get money for his sister and her baby, and I was angry, riled up, and I hit him so fucking hard.”
“The guy tonight?”
“No, Danny… way back…” His expression was unfocused. “The reason I did time… I never meant to kill him. I’ve lived with it every day since. If I’d seen what was happening, if I hadn’t been so fucking angry. Just one more second…”
He was spiraling—questioning himself, lost in memories too jagged to hold. I saw it in the way his eyes drifted past me, as if he was slipping back into a place he’d never escaped. And I couldn’t let him go there.
He needed someone to stop him from thinking.
I pressed my hand to his cheek, and made him see me. Here. Now. “Don’t move,” I said again, breath catching.
And he didn’t. Not an inch.
“Look at me, Rio,” I demanded, and slowly he focused on me, looked into my eyes, and I saw the moment he was back in the room.
I shifted my hips, grinding down on him, testing the way his hands flexed against my waist, the hitch in his breath. “Tell me what hurts,” I whispered.
He blinked, breath ragged. “My ribs. My head.”
“And the rest?” I asked, voice lower.
“My left knee.”
I nodded, noting each injury. Then I leaned in, lips brushing his jaw. “Good. That leaves me with options.”
I set a rhythm—not too fast, careful of his injuries, but purposeful. Rocking against him, mouth finding his again in another kiss, softer this time but no less intense. I kissed the corner of his mouth, his jaw, the line of his throat. I was careful. Forceful. In control.
Across the garage, Enzo and Robbie were likely still in the back room. They could walk in at any moment, and the thought thrilled me.
“They could come out here,” I murmured against his ear.
His pupils widened, his breath catching again. But he didn’t move or stop me. He waited, lips parting, the tension in his frame replaced by something else entirely.
Want.
Trust.
Submission—only to me, only in this moment.
And I wanted to ruin him, slowly, reverently, in all the ways that wouldn’t hurt him—unless he asked.
I wanted him on his knees. I wanted to take him apart with my tongue and mouth, to learn every scar and hidden tremor, to worship his strength and unravel it with every deliberate flick and suck. I wanted to fuck him—not just out of need, but because it was him. Because I wanted thiswithhim. It wasimpossible, it was reckless, it was right there on the edge of too much—but I’d takenow. I’d take this, his warmth under me, his hands on my hips, the shape of him pressed against me as if we were made to fit. I’d take every breathy sound, every second of surrender, and wrap it around me as armor against the dark.
Just tonight.
Just for now.
