I drag my mouth close to hers, so close she can taste my words. “Then you’ll suffer. The more you give me, the deeper I’ll bury myself in you. Until there’s nothing left of you that doesn’t belong to me.”
Her lips tremble, caught between fear and surrender.
“And you,” she whispers, “what happens to you if you fall in love with me?”
The question guts me. For the first time, I hesitate. My jaw locks, my grip tightens on her throat, and I press my forehead hard against hers like I can crush the thought out of existence.
“I don’t fall in love,” I snarl, low and broken. “I ruin. I destroy. And baby girl, if you make me fall…” I press a kiss to her tear-stained cheek, almost tender, almost human. “…I’ll burn us both alive.”
Her question lingers like smoke, clinging to the walls of my chest no matter how hard I try to breathe it out.
I don’t answer it. I can’t. If I do, the whole façade I’ve built—the coldness, the distance, the hard line I’ve tried to draw between us—shatters.
Instead, I shift her closer, sliding under the sheets until her head rests against my chest. My heartbeat betrays me—too heavy, too fast — and I know she can hear it. Her fingers curl there, tentative at first, then tighter, like she’s holding on to the one truth I can’t hide.
For a while, we just lie there. The room smells of sex, sweat, and something too human for me to name. My hand strokes lazy patterns down her spine, nails grazing her skin. She shivers every time, and I tell myself it’s just because she’s sensitive, not because she wants me to keep touching her even now.
She tilts her head up, studying me in the shadows. Her eyes are still wet, her lips bruised from my mouth. “You don’t look like a man who feels nothing.”
I let out a slow breath, pinching the bridge of my nose with my free hand. “You shouldn’t read into me, baby girl. You won’t like what you find.”
She bites her lip, stubborn. “Maybe I already do.”
The words stab deeper than they should. I should laugh it off. I should mock her, remind her this is nothing but a dirty mistake between us. But when she presses her face back into my chest, breathing me in like I’m safety instead of the danger I am, something inside me fractures.
My hand fists in her hair, not to pull, not to dominate, but to keep her there. To stop her from slipping through my fingers the way everything else in my life has.
“You think this is love,” I whisper into the dark. “But it’s not. It’s a sickness. You’ll see it sooner or later.”
She muffled her reply against my skin. “Then let me be sick with you.”
My chest aches. I close my eyes and hold her tighter, knowing damn well I should let her go. But I don’t. I can’t.
Because for the first time in years, maybe decades, the silence after sin doesn’t feel empty.
Caught In Your Bed
The sheets smell like him.
Smoke, leather, something darker clinging to my skin no matter how many times I shift beneath them. My body’s wrecked, marked, used in ways I swore I’d never let happen again—except I let him, I wanted him, and now I can’t think of anything else.
His chest is solid under my cheek, his arm heavy around me, like he’s daring me to move. Like he doesn’t care if I wake Kate herself by mistake, so long as I stay trapped in his hold.
I should pull away. I should put space between us before the sun catches us both in the lie. But his legs are tangled with mine, my lips are swollen from his mouth, and when I breathe in, I can taste only him.
The doorknob rattles.
My entire body jolts. His arm clamps harder around me, pinning me down.
“Dad?” Kate’s voice. Slurred. Drunk. Too close.
My heart slams against my ribs. I bury my face against his chest like I can disappear. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch—his breathing stays calm, controlled, like he’s alreadycalculated every outcome and doesn’t give a damn about the risk.
The door creaks open an inch.
Panic claws up my throat. I clutch the sheets against my chest, praying she can’t see the outline of my body pressed to his.
“Dad? You in there?” Kate mutters again, voice thick with sleep and alcohol. “I… I don’t feel good.”
