The fireof our combined lust is gone, burned to embers, but the warmth lingers. My body feels wrung out in the best way, my limbs heavy, my skin thrumming where Graham’s hands have been. I blink up at the ceiling, my breath still slowing, my body sinking into the mattress…it’s part of me now.
Then I feel him.
A steady hand ghosts over my side, fingers trailing down my ribs before slipping beneath me, coaxing me closer. I go willingly, turning into his chest, letting him tuck me into his heat. Graham’s scent is grounding—brown sugar and coffee, something solid when everything else is wild and uncertain.
His fingers trace lazy patterns against my back, slow and gentle, reminding himself I’m here. That I let him take me apart, and now he has to put me back together.
This is the part people don’t understand. They see the scratches on my knees, the marks on my skin, and think that is what I crave. But this? This is what I need.
Because Graham and I? We’re the same. Two sides of a rusted, fucked-up coin.
Same trauma. Same past.
We just deal with it differently.
I need to give up control. To hand it over. Let someone else make the calls, shoulder the weight. Because when I was younger, control was all I had. I held everything together with white-knuckled fists, protecting scraps that were barely mine. I gripped too tight for too long. Now? I need to let go.
Graham’s the opposite. He has to hold the reins until his knuckles bleed. Needs the grip, the certainty, the illusion no one can yank the ground out from under him again. Because he knows what it feels like to have control ripped away, to be left helpless. And he swore—on what little he had left—that no one would ever put him there again.
We never talk about it. We don’t have to.
We understand.
Which is why I let him have this. Let him take me apart in all the ways he needs to, knowing I’ll let him do it again when he needs it next.
And I know, deep in my fucking bones, that Graham staying away from Willow is killing him.
Because while I let go, while I let my body take what it needs, Graham holds back. He always fucking holds back. It’s why I push at him, poke him until he wants to punish me for it. He needs the release as much as I do. That and deflection and jokes are my armor, while his is full control.
“She begged, you know.”
His whole body locks, tension snapping through him, a wire pulled too tight.
I smile into his skin, feeling his heartbeat against my cheek. “Willow,” I add, as if he doesn’t already know who she is.
His breath shudders out, barely controlled.
“Begged me,” I add, just to twist the knife.
His fingers tighten in my hair. A warning.
I hum. “You’re stronger than me.”
“Obviously,” he mutters.
I chuckle, tilting my head up, watching his profile in the dim light. “I would’ve folded for her the second she gave me those eyes she gives you.”
His jaw clenches, his throat working.
I press my lips against his skin, soothing the tension there. “You really gonna be able to hold out?”
Another exhale, another beat of silence.
Then—
“She’s not ready.”
I don’t argue. Because for all the shit I give him, all the ways I press his buttons, I know Graham.
