“Selene.” He’s trembling, buried to the hilt, giving me a moment to adjust. “Fuck, you feel?—”
“Move.” I clench around him, gratified by his sharp inhale. “Now.”
He moves.
Not gentle. Not careful. He fucks me like he’s been starving for this—hard, deep strokes that hit something electric inside me with every thrust. The bed slams against the wall. The sparks between us build and flare, lighting up the room in bursts of gold and white.
I match his rhythm, rising to meet him, nails raking his back, teeth finding his shoulder. He groans into my neck, one hand fisting in my hair, the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave marks I’ll wear proudly tomorrow.
“Harder,” I gasp. “Please?—”
He hitches my leg higher, changes the angle, and I scream. The pleasure is blinding—white-hot and relentless, building with every snap of his hips. His forehead presses to mine, his breath ragged, his eyes locked on mine.
No hiding. No walls. Just this.
“Selene.” My name like a prayer. “I?—”
“I know.” I pull him down and kiss him, messy and desperate, tasting my own moans on his tongue. “I know.”
He drives into me harder, faster, chasing the peak with me. The pleasure coils tighter with every thrust, every drag of his cock inside me. His palm presses flat over my heart, heat radiating from it, and somewhere in the haze, I register that he’s holding back—some essential part of himself still leashed.
But I’m too far gone to care. Too lost in the sensation of him filling me, the obscene slap of skin on skin, the way he groans my name like it’s being ripped from his chest.
“Come for me,” he growls against my ear. “Let me feel you.”
I shatter.
The orgasm tears through me, whiting out my vision, clenching around him in waves. His name rips from my throat asmy fire flares bright enough to illuminate the room. He follows a moment later with a broken roar, pulsing inside me, his whole body shuddering as he comes.
For a long moment, we just breathe. Tangled together, hearts pounding, the sparks fading slowly from our sweat-slicked skin. His weight presses me into the mattress, and I don’t want him to move. Don’t want this moment to end.
But even as the pleasure recedes, even as my breathing starts to even out, I feel his tension returning. The walls rebuilding, brick by brick.
He rolls to the side,taking me with him, and I curl against his chest. His heartbeat is thunder beneath my ear. His skin is still furnace-hot, slicked with sweat. One arm wraps around me, holding me close, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my spine.
For a moment, everything is perfect. The afterglow. The quiet. The feeling of being held by someone who sees all of me—the fire and the stubbornness and the fear—and wants me anyway.
The sex was incredible. Earth-shattering. The kind of experience that ruins you for anyone else.
But there’s an ache beneath the satisfaction. A hollow space where more should be.
I press my palm over my heart. The skin is warm from where his hand rested, but there’s no mark. No lasting heat.
“That wasn’t everything.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
He tenses beneath me.
“It’s all I can give you.”
I push myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. His face is carefully blank—that stoic mask I’m learning to hate.
“Bullshit.”
“Selene—”
“Don’t.” I press my finger to his lips. “Don’t lie to me. Not after this. You held back. I felt it. Your hand on my heart—you were going to do it, weren’t you? The claiming. And you stopped yourself.”
His jaw works. His eyes won’t meet mine.
