Oaks.
His hands.
His voice.
The restraint in his eyes, the way it felt like he was holding back something bigger than both of us.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shake it off.
Instead, another fragment hits me, sharp as a slap.
Not from the dream, from my imagination, from the pieces I’ve been assembling all week.
The way Oaks checks on me in public when it costs him something.
The way my whole body reacts to him.
That with the memory of his offer. Find him when I’m sober. And I don’t know if my mind invented the words. Or if when he’s talking about me remembering does he mean that part.
Does the biker think I remember everything? Is he coming around for us to finish what I started?
Damn, Brit, you’re slow.
My shame shifts, turns, finds a new edge.
If I’m going to be humiliated in this town, if I’m going to be the girl they whisper about, the least I deserve is to stop trembling like prey in my own damn bathroom.
I turn the lock on the door.
The click is small, but it’s something I control.
I lean my forehead against the cool mirror and let myself breathe. Slower. Deeper. Trying to settle the quake in my chest. It doesn’t settle. It pools lower, hot and needy.
My hand slides under the hem of my shirt. My skin is warm. My palm shakes. I hate that it shakes. I hate that I’m doing this because I’m mortified and scared and my body still wants what it wanted in that dream.
Oaks.
But wanting is the only thing that feels like mine right now.
I slide my hand lower, over my stomach, down between my thighs, and the second I touch myself I bite back a sound that would embarrass me if anyone could hear it. My legs tense. My head tips back, breath stuttering, and for a moment the whole world narrows down to sensation and pulse and the raw truth that my body does not care about small-town rules.
I think about Oaks.
My fingers move slowly at first, like I’m testing whether I’m allowed to do this, whether pleasure is something I’m still permitted after making a fool of myself in my own head.
Then the want takes over, and I stop pretending I’m gentle.
I brace a hand on the sink, knuckles whitening, and rub myself with a pressure that makes my knees soften. I close my eyes and the Lockup blooms behind my lids, the music, the smoke, the heat, Oaks’ hands on my waist, his breath at my ear, his voice telling me no like he meant it and liked it at the same time.
I imagine his mouth close to mine, not kissing, not yet, just hovering, making me earn it.
I imagine him looking at me the way he did in that dream, that dark, controlled stare that says he sees every bad decision I’m about to make and he’s deciding whether to stop me or let me burn.
My breath comes faster. My hips rock, chasing it, angry at myself for how good it feels, angry at how much I need the release, how much my body wants to discharge the fear the way it discharges hunger.
I whisper his name without meaning to.
It comes out like a confession.
