"I can't sleep."
My voice comes out breathy, and his eyes drop to my chest where my nipples press against the thin fabric.
"You should try."
The words hang between us, a threadbare excuse, neither of us believing he means it. What he means is something else: that the effort matters more than the outcome, that the ritual of pretending at distance is some kind of safety. But there's nothing safe about the way he looks at me. Nothing safe about the way my body wants him, craves him like a vice.
"I did." My voice is soft, but it vibrates with need. "I keep thinking about you." I step forward, so close the heat off his skin radiates into me, so close I could trace the vein on his neck with my tongue if I wanted to. "About your hands. Your mouth. What you could do to me."
His jaw flexes, a tic of effort. I remember reading about the fight-or-flight response, but what I'm seeing now is fightandflight, both, a tangle of wanting and self-preservation. He wants to run and he wants to devour me, and I don't know which will win.
"Marisol." It’s not just my name, it's a barricade and a dare. The syllables are rough, guttural, scraped raw by something inside him. He tries to plant his feet, to root himself in this last square of solid ground, but I see the way his hands clench at his sides, as if they're itching to grab me and never let go.
So I step into the breach. My fingers find the hem of his sweatpants and tug gently, just enough to remind him where this could go. I look up at him, all big dark eyes and eyelashes still wet from crying, and for a second I see something like horror in his face—like he knows how close he is to shattering, how little it would take for all his control to mean nothing.
"I'm not drunk," I say, and the words are a strange comfort, a secret promise. "Not high. I'm completely sober and I'm sofucking wet I've soaked through these shorts just thinking about you."
The air changes between us. Its flavor is salt and heat, ozone before the lightning strike. His nostrils flare and this time, I wonder if he can actually smell me, if my need is a pheromone leaking through the cotton. He inhales, chest rising, eyes burning into mine. The part of me that is vulnerable almost wants to turn away, but the other part, the raw and brazen part, holds his gaze.
"Wanting isn't the same as having." His words come out rough, sandpaper and gravel. He means them as a warning, maybe as a kindness, but they land like a challenge.
So I meet him halfway, pressing my palm flat against his chest, feeling the hard thud of his heart beneath the skin. He's trembling, just a little, and the idea that I can shake him makes me wild with power. I slide my hand up, letting my nails graze his collarbone, and I feel him shiver.
"Why not?" I move closer until my nipples brush his chest through my tank. We both inhale sharply. "I've wanted you since you threw that man into the rocks. Since you carried me to bed. Since you admitted you wanted to pin me against the refrigerator and find out what I sound like when I come."
"That's not…"
"You said you wanted me. Were you lying?"
"No."
The word comes out ragged, a single syllable torn from somewhere deep and vault-black. His eyes dart away, land on the wall above my head, looking at the landscape painting like a lighthouse beam he’s anchoring himself to so he doesn’t get lost in me. I let him have his second of silence, the space between our bodies charged and trembling, but then I crowd him harder, my knee nudging between his thighs.
"Then have me," I whisper.
It’s a challenge, a spell, maybe a last gasp from the part of me that’s still afraid I’m too much or too little, that if I ask for what I want the universe will laugh in my face.
He blinks, and when his gaze refocuses it’s like he’s seeing me for the first time, or maybe like he’s seeing a version of me that nobody else ever gets to see. I remember the first time I saw a forest fire on TV, the way the flames devoured everything in their path—inevitable, beautiful, terrifying. That’s how he looks at me now.
"Make me forget everything except your name." I say it again, louder.
I want to hear myself say it. I want to see the words land and catch, the same way I want his hands on my skin, his mouth on my mouth, his body in my body.
He hesitates, and for a second I wonder if I’ve gone too far, if I’ve punctured the careful little ecosystem of us and introduced a predator. But then he speaks—so softly I almost miss it.
"I don’t know how to do that without…"
His voice falters, and I finish the thought for him. "Without what? Losing control?" I let my hand drift lower, from the soft heat of his stomach to the waistband of those sweatpants, thumb circling the knot of the drawcord. "Maybe that's exactly what we both need."
He makes a strangled, animal sound—a sound I’ve never heard from him before, not in training, not in pain, not even in anger. It’s the sound of something finally breaking free. For a single, crystalline moment, we just look at each other. My pulse thunders in my ears, and his eyes—the kind of eyes you don’t look into unless you want to be seen all the way through—are locked on mine.
I rise up, tiptoeing just enough to close the last inch. My mouth meets his, and the kiss is clumsy at first, a collision ofteeth and hot breath and the sharp, nervous laugh I can’t help but let out into his mouth.
He doesn’t move. His hands stay clenched at his sides, knuckles white. My hands are everywhere—his jaw, his chest, the line of his neck where the pulse beats hard and wild. I kiss him harder, and that’s when he finally snaps.
His hands grip my waist and haul me against him, his mouth crashing down on mine with bruising force. This isn't the panic-attack kiss or the training-session almost-kiss. This is raw hunger, his tongue invading my mouth, claiming, consuming. I taste cinnamon and something darker, more primal.
He walks me into his room, kicks the door shut hard enough to rattle the frame. My back slams against it and his body cages me, solid muscle. His cock presses against my stomach through his sweatpants, fully hard now, and I grind against him shamelessly.
